Helena Chemical Co. shook off claims by a group of cotton farmers that drift from aerial herbicide spraying the company oversaw on a large ranch caused reduced crop yield.
The farmers’ expert witnesses “offered no reliable way to extrapolate from the small number of positive lab tests” that the herbicide was present “in the rest of the vast and scattered acreage for which recovery is sought,” the Texas Supreme Court ruled in an opinion written by Judge James D. Blacklock.
The evidence the farmers offered about “patchiness” of aerial drift patterns was inconclusive, the court said. The experts’ ...