SEATTLE-- Steve W. Berman, a partner at Seattle's Hagens & Berman, is a well-known Pacific Northwest plaintiffs' lawyer who, in the past, has sued cigarette manufacturers, makers of defective siding, fast-food restaurants where people got salmonella and companies whose stocks have not performed according to investor expectations.
However, this story says his current clients are Washington farmers who say their onion and potato crops were ruined because the commercial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides they bought from several suppliers bore industrial waste, containing such dangerous chemicals as lead, arsenic and mercury, blended in as filler.
Berman has filed suits in both Grand County Superior Court and in federal court seeking compensatory and punitive damages, monitoring of the contaminated agricultural land for 10 years and full disclosure of the products' chemical makeup to government regulatory agencies.
The story adds that Mr. Berman's firm launched a Web site ( http://www.hagens-berman.com/fertilizer ) to report on the litigation. According to the site, the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act allows industrial waste--including cadmium, lead, dioxins, radioactive elements and arsenic--to be recycled into fertilizer.
Defendants in the case are Quincy Farm Chemical, of Quincy, Wash.,
and Cenex Inc., of St. Paul, Minn. In the state court case both
are represented by Michael R. Tabler, of Schultheis & Tabler, of
Ephrata, Wash., who was quoted as saying, "I would have a hard time
comprehending the wisdom that a company like QFC would go out and
intentionally destroy its customers."
Mitchell B. Stargrove, N.D., L.Ac.
Integrative Medical Arts Group, Inc.
Integrative Medicine, Natural Health and Alternative Therapies
IBIS Medical Software: Interactive BodyMind Information System
http://www.HealthWWWeb.com Paracelsus Paracelsus@teleport.com
503/526-1972
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Beaverton, OR 97005
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