Hare Wynn Serves as Co-Lead Class Counsel in $1.51 Billion Syngenta Settlement for U.S. Corn Farmers

In 2011, Syngenta began selling Agrisure Viptera corn seed in the United States. The seed contained a genetically modified trait that improved resistance to certain insects. The problem: China had not yet approved that trait for imported corn, and Chinese customs authorities began rejecting and destroying American corn shipments when they detected it in cargo holds.

The rejections started arriving in late 2013. China was at the time one of the largest buyers of U.S. corn. As shipments piled up at ports and word spread through the grain trade, corn prices fell sharply. Farmers who had never planted Viptera were affected anyway, because commingled grain moving through the same elevators and transportation corridors tested positive for the trait. The damage spread across the entire U.S. corn supply chain.

Plaintiffs filed suits in multiple federal courts, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated them before Judge John W. Lungstrum in the District of Kansas. The class covered U.S. corn growers, crop-share landlords, grain handling facilities, and ethanol plants that sold corn after September 15, 2013. The first bellwether trial in the MDL went to verdict before the settlement was reached: in June 2017, a federal jury in the District of Kansas awarded $217.7 million to a class of more than 7,000 Kansas corn producers, finding Syngenta negligent in the timing and manner in which it commercialized the trait.

Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton was appointed co-lead class counsel alongside Patrick Stueve of Stueve Siegel Hanson, William Chaney of Gray Reed and McGraw, and Don Downing of Gray Ritter and Graham. The co-leads negotiated a nationwide resolution that Syngenta agreed to in early 2018. The total settlement fund reached $1.51 billion.

Judge Lungstrum granted final approval on December 7, 2018. The settlement was described at the time as the largest agricultural class action settlement in U.S. history. Payments to class members were expected to begin in the second quarter of 2019, with the caveat that appeals could delay distributions. Syngenta was acquired by ChemChina during the litigation; ChemChina funded the settlement.

China approved the Viptera and Duracade traits in December 2014, ending the import blockade, but by that point the economic losses to American agriculture had already accumulated across three consecutive marketing years.