GRANTS PASS, Ore.—A judge here is considering whether parties that unsuccessfully defended a legal challenge to Josephine County’s GMO ban should pay the plaintiff farmers’ attorney fees.
In May, farmers Robert and Shelley Ann White convinced a judge the county’s GMO ban, approved by voters in 2014, was pre-empted by a state law passed the prior year.
Supporters of the ban—Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families, a non-profit, and Siskiyou Seeds, an organic company—intervened in the lawsuit to defend the county ordinance.
Now, the plaintiff farmers are seeking to recover $29,205 in attorney fees from the intervenors for unnecessarily complicating the litigation.
“All we want is compensation for time that we had to waste,” John DiLorenzo, attorney for the growers, said Wednesday during a hearing on the matter.
The intervenors unsuccessfully argued that Oregon’s seed pre-emption law was unconstitutional because lawmakers created a “regulatory void” by not imposing rules on GMO production.
DiLorenzo said this wasn’t an objectively reasonable argument because the intervenors could point to no legal precedent in Oregon, but instead relied on a ruling from Ohio.
“It had absolutely no bearing on Oregon law,” he said.
Legal questions over state pre-emption of local ordinances have long been settled by previous court rulings, he said.
“Ignoring them would upset years of decisions and throw state pre-emption law into complete disarray,” DiLorenzo said.
OSFF and Siskiyou Seeds countered that the plaintiffs are not allowed to recover attorney fees and are simply trying to send a “chilling message” to prevent similar defenses of local ordinances elsewhere.
Source: www.capitalpress.com