RALEIGH, NC (Legal Newsline) - When novelist Corban Addison was approached to write a nonfiction book about the downsides of hog farms, it did not immediately strike him as something he would be able to sell to a publisher. But after watching attorney Michael Kaeske present a two-hour opening statement in the courtroom, he was compelled to action.
“It immediately just arrested me,” Addison said. “Something profound was there. I love writing about social justice and I love writing about the law because I'm a lawyer even though I don't practice anymore.”
Kaeske was arguing on behalf of 500 African Americans who were neighbors of hog farms maintained by Smithfield Foods where feces and urine are allegedly sprayed on the property.
“The community went from having clean air to having air with excessive amounts of hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and various other really disgusting particulates that cause all sorts of respiratory problems, circulatory problems, and psychological problems,” Addison told the Legal Newsline.
Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial, published by Alfred A. Knopf and forwarded by John Grisham, is described as an international master class in trial advocacy that delves into every level of litigating a billion-dollar case including developing and representing poor rural plaintiffs in a racially and politically charged atmosphere.
“There were death threats,” Addison said. “There were rallies in the streets with thousands of farmers. There were powerful people, including the lieutenant governor, a U.S. senator, and various people who were railing against the lawyers and claiming that they were out-of-state lawyers who were fleecing poor farmers when in reality, it was a North Carolina lawyer who brought these cases on behalf of poor, rural black people.”
Chapter 6, The Butcher, discusses in detail the acquisition of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company, Shuanghui International Holdings, whose chairman is reportedly a member of China's National People's Congress and has ties to senior members of the Chinese Communist Party.
“The Shuanghui takeover bid raises a host of prominent eyebrows in Washington, D.C.,” Addison wrote in the 388-page tome. “It is not just the inflated offer price that gives economists intelligence analysts and politicians pause. It's China's strategy of foreign investment in industry after industry, steel, paper, glass auto parts, and solar energy, the Chinese have used a spiral drill approach to undercut foreign competitors.”
In the end, the verdicts totaled some $550,000,000.
“There was a settlement for an undisclosed amount with a fee that was paid to the lawyers and then the community members got the rest," Addison said.
Despite the cost Smithfield paid, change has been slow.
Although conditions on the ground are better for some residents of Eastern North Carolina, Smithfield admitted 20 years ago that their technology needed to be replaced but they've never replaced it, according to Addison.
“The challenge is that until Smithfield is actually required by some authority that is bigger than a jury to replace their medieval technology, they are going to continue minting their billions and spraying this out onto fields in Eastern North Carolina the way they always have while putting full-color ads in the Raleigh News and Observer saying ‘We make good food responsibly.’”