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Speaker 1: Corn is measured by the bushel, but the tens of

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Speaker 1: thousands of lawsuits going to trial against giants, Swiss seed

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Speaker 1: Maker's and Genta will be measured in the economic damage

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Speaker 1: to corn farmers. The lawsuits claim that Cyngenta's decision to

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Speaker 1: introduce a genetically engineered corn seed to the US market

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Speaker 1: before China had approved it for imports, had a domino

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Speaker 1: effect that resulted in around five billion dollars in damage

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Speaker 1: to farmers. Shipments of a bumper crop of corn in

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Speaker 1: were rejected by China, causing a precipitous drop in prices

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Speaker 1: of corn. The average US cash corn price has fallen

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Speaker 1: twenty one since then. Syngenta denies any wrongdoing. Joining us

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Speaker 1: are Margaret Kronin Fisk Bloomberg News legal reporter and Andrew Torrence,

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Speaker 1: professor at the University of Kansas School of Law. Peggy

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Speaker 1: tell Us more about the plaintiffs claim that Syngenta aggressively

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Speaker 1: marketed the seeds even when it knew that Chinese approval

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Speaker 1: was going to be a problem. C Genta had gotten

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Speaker 1: US approval in two thousand and ten to market to

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Speaker 1: state seeds, and according to the farmers, they assured assured

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Speaker 1: them that the company was was going to get approval

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Speaker 1: from from the Chinese. Unfortunately, the Chinese rejected, did not

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Speaker 1: give the approval and actually rejected the corn when they

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Speaker 1: found that they had been contaminated by the genetically modified seed.

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Speaker 1: Plain off Sin say that as a result that they

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Speaker 1: not only lost they had damages from lost profits, lost

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Speaker 1: sales in two thousand and thirteen for that first crop year,

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Speaker 1: but for the succeeding four years. So each year the

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Speaker 1: prices had gone down and stayed down. And the reason

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Speaker 1: for that is that even when China finally approved the

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Speaker 1: corn is they had already found another market for it

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Speaker 1: market to buy from. They were going to the Ukraine

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Speaker 1: and other places where the corn was cheaper. Andrew the

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Speaker 1: plaint do I mean the plaintiffs claims here. Aren't only

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Speaker 1: that the Cingenter corn producers were, you know, those using

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Speaker 1: the Cingenter corn were had a problem with China. It's

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Speaker 1: that everybody who's mixed together, right, So there are there

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Speaker 1: are farmers who weren't been using this corn who our plaintiffs.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that right? Yeah? That's correct. Um. The courts and

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Speaker 1: the various jurisdictions that are looking into this, including the

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Speaker 1: Minnesota State Court. They've made an effort to sequester some

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Speaker 1: of these cases. So um some of the farmers who

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Speaker 1: directly produced are trying to are being separated from some

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Speaker 1: of the farmers who didn't produce. But because they put

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Speaker 1: their corn into um corn silos that also had victor

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Speaker 1: a corn in them and got mixed up together, they

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Speaker 1: they alleged that they were penalized by China alongside the

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Speaker 1: ones who did make the Victora corn so peggy. Last

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Speaker 1: year in Minnesota, Judge Thomas Sipkins ruled that the company Cyngenta,

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Speaker 1: had a duty to control the timing, manner and scope

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Speaker 1: of take vip Tera to market. What is Cingenta's defense,

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Speaker 1: so Gener's defense is one is that they had right

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Speaker 1: to sell the corn because they were approved in the

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Speaker 1: United States. There was no reason to wait for the

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Speaker 1: Chinese approval because the Chinese. Waiting for Chinese approval means

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Speaker 1: that you would be um like extort, waiting for extortion

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Speaker 1: by the Chinese forever. The other thing is that there

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Speaker 1: were no damages caused by this is the amount. The

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Speaker 1: fact that the prices went down was not related to

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Speaker 1: the rejection by the Chinese, and the prices have been

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Speaker 1: going down because it was a bumper crop. The Chinese,

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Speaker 1: in fact, according to Senta, rejected the corn because the

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Speaker 1: prices had gone down. They had been locked into contracts

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Speaker 1: with the United States to buy for a corn at

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Speaker 1: a higher price. Once they rejected it, they could get

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Speaker 1: out of those contracts and then go to the Ukraine

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Speaker 1: in other places where the corn was cheaper andrew In

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Speaker 1: order for the plaintiffs, I mean, you have a lot

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Speaker 1: of lawsuits here and a lot of plants, and presumably

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Speaker 1: you're going to have some different theories. But generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: what how are the plantiffs going to prove their case here?

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Speaker 1: What are they gonna have to show? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: it's going to be an uphill battle to show um,

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Speaker 1: especially the punitive damages that the plaintiffs are after. What

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Speaker 1: they're going to have to show is that Syngenta, knowing

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Speaker 1: or ought to knowing that they should not have put

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Speaker 1: these things on the market, did so anyway, and that

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Speaker 1: as a result of putting it on the market in

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Speaker 1: sort of a negligent fashion, that this negatively impacted the

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Speaker 1: market for corn in the future because it got banned

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Speaker 1: by China. In order to do that, they're not probably

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Speaker 1: going to find very many smoking guns, none that I've

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Speaker 1: seen so far, But they're going to take the perspective

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Speaker 1: that in two thousand and ten to two thousand and seventeen,

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Speaker 1: in a global market for agricultural commodities, that any company

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Speaker 1: that produces a genetically modified UM product like the victor

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Speaker 1: a corn or the Dericade corn really ought to know

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Speaker 1: that there are markets outside the United States. So, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that it was approved in the United States

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Speaker 1: and completely legal to sell there, that syn Gender ought

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Speaker 1: to have known and taken into account the foreign markets

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Speaker 1: which also affect the price. And because, according to the plaintiffs,

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Speaker 1: they didn't take that into account, they ought to be

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Speaker 1: penalized for the damages that the farmers, both the ones

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Speaker 1: that produced the victora and the ones who are affected

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Speaker 1: who didn't grow viptra, not to mention the grain handlers

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Speaker 1: who are suing Louisiana Um. They owed them compensation and

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Speaker 1: possibly punitive damages if their actions rose to the level

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Speaker 1: of sort of willful disregard for the standards that they

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Speaker 1: should have applied.