Smithfield faces down third, and largest yet, 'nuisance' award

Smithfield Foods Inc. has struck out a third time with juries in North Carolina, as its Murphy-Brown LLC hog production unit was ordered on Friday to pay $473.5 million to plaintiffs in a noise and odor lawsuit filed by residents near some of its hog farms, according to court documents. Businesses raising hogs for Smithfield’s pork products have already lost two other cases, one in which the jury awarded $50 million and one in which the award was $25 million.  In the third case, among dozens that have been filed, the jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina awarded $3 million to $5 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages to each of the case’s six complainants. In an email, a Smithfield spokeswoman told Meatingplace that, due to a gag order imposed by the judge in the case, the company was unable to comment. The North Carolina Legislature in June approved the Farm Act of 2018, which sets a deadline for bringing such suits of one year from an operation’s start and allows punitive damages only against a farm that had a criminal charge or code violation.