# Growing Media Supplier Loses $39 Million Lawsuit Over Fertilizer



## Ray (Feb 22, 2012)

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/02/multnomah_county_jury_grants_4.html


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## billc (Feb 22, 2012)

Well, at least they weren't using a low K formula.:rollhappy:

Bill


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## Rick (Feb 22, 2012)

Pretty crazy!

Good thing we have the Beta trial going on now!

However, unless something else is really screwed up (as the article contends about the faulty "slow release" function), the basic NPK of the messed up fert is about the same as everything else out there.


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## gonewild (Feb 22, 2012)

Those growers screwed up. Using a cheap fertilizer without testing it?


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## nikv (Feb 22, 2012)

Isn't that sorta akin to putting all your eggs into one basket? Why didn't they test it on a smaller population before using it so widespread?


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## SlipperFan (Feb 22, 2012)

That's true. On the other hand, manufacturers should have responsibility over the products they create.


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## Stone (Feb 22, 2012)

gonewild said:


> Those growers screwed up. Using a cheap fertilizer without testing it?



Nursery operators are not in the habit of testing a new fertilizer but relying on the maufactures' integrity as they always have. It probably looked like any other controlled-release fert. I think the sellers of the product were rightly blamed. I mean who tests a bottle of shampoo before pouring it on their head?


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## Ozpaph (Feb 23, 2012)

A good lesson to learn for all.


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## Marc (Feb 23, 2012)

Sad story, was surprised to see a Dutchmen being involved in that article as well.


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## gonewild (Feb 23, 2012)

Stone said:


> Nursery operators are not in the habit of testing a new fertilizer but relying on the maufactures' integrity as they always have. It probably looked like any other controlled-release fert. I think the sellers of the product were rightly blamed. I mean who tests a bottle of shampoo before pouring it on their head?



If I had 12 million dollars worth of hair to shampoo I would test a new formula that was cheaper than the one I had been using. Actually I would not use a cheap shampoo. 

Look at the care and concern SlipperTalkers have over testing K-lite, The growers in the lawsuit should have thought the same way.


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## gonewild (Feb 23, 2012)

SlipperFan said:


> That's true. On the other hand, manufacturers should have responsibility over the products they create.



Insurance pays it and everyone's costs go up when you buy a bag of fertilizer.


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## Lanmark (Feb 23, 2012)

gonewild said:


> Insurance pays it and everyone's costs go up when you buy a bag of fertilizer.



That's still no excuse for deliberate negligence on the part of the fertilizer manufacturer. They knowingly cut corners to produce a cheap product in an effort to undercut the market. The results were devastating. I do *not* believe a completely free market economy without any consumer protections whatsoever is the right way to go. You might change your tune if you were victimized by reckless corporate disregard for consumers. How would you feel if you dined at a restaurant for the first time and suffered irreparable physical harm because the food they served to you was knowingly flavor-enhanced with some dangerous, non-tested, non-FDA-approved chemical imported from abroad and you just happened to be the first person to suffer the ill effects from consuming it? How would you feel if someone then told you that you should have only tasted the restaurant's food in advance and then waited a week before dining on a full meal there? It makes just about as much sense as your argument about the fertilizer. It's thoughtless and self-centered. oke:


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## NYEric (Feb 23, 2012)

Wait a minute! This is the fertilizer I use; can I get a $$Million$$!?


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## gonewild (Feb 23, 2012)

Lanmark said:


> That's still no excuse for deliberate negligence on the part of the fertilizer manufacturer. They knowingly cut corners to produce a cheap product in an effort to undercut the market. The results were devastating. I do *not* believe a completely free market economy without any consumer protections whatsoever is the right way to go. You might change your tune if you were victimized by reckless corporate disregard for consumers. How would you feel if you dined at a restaurant for the first time and suffered irreparable physical harm because the food they served to you was knowingly flavor-enhanced with some dangerous, non-tested, non-FDA-approved chemical imported from abroad and you just happened to be the first person to suffer the ill effects from consuming it? How would you feel if someone then told you that you should have only tasted the restaurant's food in advance and then waited a week before dining on a full meal there? It makes just about as much sense as your argument about the fertilizer. It's thoughtless and self-centered. oke:



I'll have to re read the article, I thought the complaint was that the slow release fertilizer released too fast not that it contained toxic chemicals?

But if you went to a restaurant serving steak and lobster for $2 a plate would you order it and eat it without thinking you might get sick?


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## Lanmark (Feb 23, 2012)

gonewild said:


> I'll have to re read the article, I thought the complaint was that the slow release fertilizer released too fast not that it contained toxic chemicals?
> 
> But if you went to a restaurant serving steak and lobster for $2 a plate would you order it and eat it without thinking you might get sick?



It was in fact a slow release fertilizer which released too fast. I should have used a different analogy. The point is that the product was defective due to gross negligence on the part of the manufacturer who was trying to undercut the market. The company should have conducted tests and trials before marketing the product. Their claims and advertising about their product were patently false, and if they were not already aware of this, they should have been. This was _not_ a petty lawsuit. The losses to the growers were substantial and the evidence against the manufacturer was clear and damning, hence the verdict and the award for the plaintiffs.


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## gonewild (Feb 23, 2012)

From the artilce...

"Aujla's assistant told Aujla that the crops appeared to be dying possibly because of Multicote, but Aujla thought it was a bad year because he hadn't been attentive to the operations. Aujla also used Multicote in 2008, before realizing that it was the problem."

Even the grower knew he was responsible. A $10 ppm meter should have been used and the problem could have been averted. And then to continue using it for 2 years? Granted that is no excuse for the manufacturer not selling a dependable product. 

The manufacturer used cheaper materials to increase their profit margin and the grower bought cheaper fertilizer to increase their profit margin. What's the difference other than sympathy for the grower and dislike for the multi billion dollar company? I'm OK with sticking it to the insurance company just don't understand why the grower is not part at fault?


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## Paphman910 (Feb 23, 2012)

Interesting article! Such a large award! I bet the lawyers get at least half the amount!

Paphman910


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## Lanmark (Feb 23, 2012)

Certainly the grower bears some level of responsibility, but the brunt of the blame lies with the manufacturer. It is not unreasonable to expect the product to function as advertised without defect. It is not unreasonable to expect that the manufacturer had conducted product trials equivalent to industry standards prior to marketing the product. It is not unreasonable to expect that strict manufacturing controls were in place. This was not marketed as some experimental unproven product. There were no small-print disclaimers that the claims made regarding the performance of this product were unsubstantiated, untested and potentially flawed. The fact remains that the manufacturer knowingly made an inferior product to undercut the market and bolster profits. The manufacturer knowingly victimized its paying customers. This has nothing to do with dislike for the company because of its size or wealth. It's all about morality and social responsibility.

There's a good lesson in this for all of us: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is!



Paphman910 said:


> Interesting article! Such a large award! *I bet the lawyers get at least half the amount!*
> 
> Paphman910


I bet they do! :arrr: It doesn't quite seem right either, and there's an entirely new topic.


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## gonewild (Feb 23, 2012)

Lanmark said:


> Certainly the grower bears some level of responsibility, but the brunt of the blame lies with the manufacturer. It is not unreasonable to expect the product to function as advertised without defect. It is not unreasonable to expect that the manufacturer had conducted product trials equivalent to industry standards prior to marketing the product. It is not unreasonable to expect that strict manufacturing controls were in place. This was not marketed as some experimental unproven product. There were no small-print disclaimers that the claims made regarding the performance of this product were unsubstantiated, untested and unproven. The fact remains that the manufacturer knowingly made an inferior product to undercut the market and bolster profits. The manufacturer knowingly victimized its paying customers. This has nothing to do with dislike for the company because of its size or wealth. It's all about morality and social responsibility.
> 
> There's a good lesson in this for all of us: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is!



If all those things you refer to as "unreasonable" are fact then I agree with you, I just did not read those parts in the article, You obviously have more info. Did the manufacturer "knowingly" victimize its customers or did they make a mistake?

If it was truly about morality the award would have been for the actual damages and not an additional 30 million to punish. The social responsibility part is where the attorneys get rich off of the insurance company that members of society pay for.


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## Lanmark (Feb 23, 2012)

gonewild said:


> If all those things you refer to as "unreasonable" are fact then I agree with you, I just did not read those parts in the article, You obviously have more info. Did the manufacturer "knowingly" victimize its customers or did they make a mistake?
> 
> If it was truly about morality the award would have been for the actual damages and not an additional 30 million to punish. The social responsibility part is where the attorneys get rich off of the insurance company that members of society pay for.



The manufacturer knowingly mixed cheaper ingredients into an untested blend and knowingly marketed it as a safe and effective but much cheaper alternative to Osmocote. They may or may not have known that their product was going to fail in an epic manner, but clearly they didn't care enough to bother using quality ingredients or to bother with testing the product adequately before marketing it as a safe and effective alternative to Osmocote. They knew better.

The risk pool of insurance coverage is something everyone pays into in order to have coverage, so if you have a problem with your premiums going up, don't buy the insurance or else make a point to insist that your provider drops coverage of unethical pool members. I think it's lame to use "society paying for it" as an excuse to pan the damages awarded to these victimized growers who suffered very real damages. Sorry, but that's how I feel. Actual damages can be calculated by actual plants killed, but how can you put a price on the goodwill and reputations which were damaged when the growers failed to fill standing orders for healthy plants to established buyers? It's very difficult to do, hence the larger award amount. These types of damages awarded are also meant as a deterrent to repeat actions as much as they are meant as a punishment.

Attorney fees are a whole other problem in my opinion. They are part of the entire culture of greed we live in today. Again, this is a separate factor which should not be used as an excuse to pan the damages awarded to the victims in this case. We as a society can begin to demand that overpaid attorneys and overpaid CEOs, overpaid brokers and others who suck vast amounts of money out of our economy stop taking such high rates of pay. It will take a strong grass roots effort to effect such sweeping changes, but it is not impossible. The attitude that we should deny justice to victims for the sake of society is the wrong way to go. Start demanding that those at the top start acting in more socially equitable ways. They did not build their fortunes alone. They built them on the backs of the laborers, on the dimes of the consumers, on the roads which everyone's taxes paid to pave, on the educations everyone's taxes helped pay for, and on the rest of the infrastructure which our taxes paid for. I refuse to sit idly by while our society returns to the Gilded Age of rich industrialists, underpaid unorganized workers, vast numbers of impoverished Americans, little or no middle class to speak of, and no legal rights or representation for anyone but those at the very top.


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## John M (Feb 23, 2012)

The manufacturers made and marketed horticultural snake oil. They created a product out of cheap ingredients and without the necessary scientific research and testing, specifically to compete with a well established, tried and true "higher end" fertilizer brand. Their bad formula not only did not work and do what they advertised it would, it killed the crops. That makes them liable. Expecting the farmers to test it first is not reasonable. That's what the manufacturer needs to do. It can be reasonably expected that part of the price of any product includes a share of the R&D costs that helped bring the product to market in the first place. It is reasonable to expect that R&D was carried out and the new product was shown to produce the promised results with no adverse side effects. Any commercial grower can make his own fertilizer. However, there is a lot that can go wrong and those mistakes or miscalculations can cause crop failure. So, most growers rely on the "experts", who have done the R&D and who have the manufacturing quality controls to produce and market a consistent product that is effective and safe.

This was food for plants. What is this was food for people. What if a food vending supply company got a baseball stadium to begin using it's hotdogs because they were cheaper and said to be just as good as the original ones. Then, 60,000 people eat them and begin dying because the manufacturer used some cheap ingredients to make the taste and texture seem right; but, without regard for the health effects on the consumer. In a case like that, nobody would be blaming the fans at the ball park for eating the food. It'd all be on the manufacturer who made the weiners.


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## Roth (Feb 24, 2012)

John M said:


> The manufacturers made and marketed horticultural snake oil. They created a product out of cheap ingredients and without the necessary scientific research and testing, specifically to compete with a well established, tried and true "higher end" fertilizer brand. Their bad formula not only did not work and do what they advertised it would, it killed the crops. That makes them liable. Expecting the farmers to test it first is not reasonable. That's what the manufacturer needs to do. It can be reasonably expected that part of the price of any product includes a share of the R&D costs that helped bring the product to market in the first place. It is reasonable to expect that R&D was carried out and the new product was shown to produce the promised results with no adverse side effects. Any commercial grower can make his own fertilizer. However, there is a lot that can go wrong and those mistakes or miscalculations can cause crop failure. So, most growers rely on the "experts", who have done the R&D and who have the manufacturing quality controls to produce and market a consistent product that is effective and safe.



So far many people use Multicote, and they never got any problems, only those two growers in this trial. It is a case where lawyers found some possible weaknesses, and pushed on it, then made a complete quack story around it.

Multicote has urea, where Osmocote has not. Multicote as a 'dangerous micronutrients blend' has manganese, zinc, and molybdenum, where Osmocote do not have or lower levels. It is very well known to pro growers that some fertilizers are very good in some conditions, and not at all in others. 

Try horse manure in a drip hydroponics, clog the lines, and sue the seller. Or attack Grodan because you use their rockwool with tap water and some fertilizer here and there and your plants are dead. 

Multicote, Osmocote, Nutricote, etc... ALL have the potential to kill the plants if applied under the wrong conditions. They can ALL become fast overnight release when using the wrong things. Multicote/Osmocote/Basacote can be doomed and release all immediately when the pH is too low. Nutricote, when people use a wetting agent ( like Aquatrol, Physan, etc...). All can be subject to microorganism attack as well which will make them instant release. The growers ALL know about that in the floriculture/horticulture.

The manganese level of Multicote may be phytotoxic if the growers did not monitor properly the pH, it was too low, and they were using bark and peat, which contain a lot of manganese in some sources ( especially the fresh US bark). 

It is a case where apparently one technical advisor told the growers to use it, because he did not know HIS job or their growing conditions, but then the growers were not skilled either, and the manufacturer has nothing to do with the problem. On the other side, the manufacturer is the only one who may have cash to pay back to those low grade growers.

For fun, Mr. Yen, who is the best Paphio concolor grower in Thailand, and won many awards for his concolor and exul, indeed use Multicote, the very same brand and rate as the trial. He puts about two tablespoon for a 20 cm pot...

The 'cheap' used by the court refers to the use of urea apparently in fertilizers, one urban legend ( urea is not 'cheap', and is indeed a valid nitrogen source). The manganese content was 'too high' ( but apparently their potting mix was too high to start with), and the unregistered chemical that is very dangerous is called ' iron sucrate', which is a trade name for a organically chelated blend of iron, citric/malic acid and carbohydrates, not really something 'dangerous' at all. The worst would be that the iron is unavailable, but there are good evidences that it is a suitable iron source, even if it is a recent newcomer.


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## Lanmark (Feb 24, 2012)

^ You do your research well, Roth, but for the record, I disagree with you on the points denoted below.



Roth said:


> It is a case where lawyers found some possible weaknesses, and pushed on it, then made a complete quack story around it.



I simply disagree. Lawyers did not make a complete quack story around this case. Perhaps you mock their work because you have a distaste for lawyers.(?)



Roth said:


> ( The manganese content was 'too high' but apparently their potting mix was too high to start with)



Yes, the manganese content was too high. Putting apostrophe marks around it in this manner -- 'too high' -- is a silly ploy to make toxic levels seem somehow less important. Too high is too high. Also, you make it sound like a factual assertion that the starting manganese levels in the growers pots were too high, but this is mere speculation on your part.



Roth said:


> It is a case where apparently one technical advisor told the growers to use it, because he did not know HIS job or their growing conditions, but then the growers were not skilled either, and the manufacturer has nothing to do with the problem. On the other side, the manufacturer is the only one who may have cash to pay back to those low grade growers.



Yes, the fertilizer distributor is definitely (not just "apparently") at fault for advising these growers to use this product. I believe the distributor should have been held liable, at least to some degree, for the massive losses incurred by these growers. I believe the distributor's advice was tainted by exposure to an overenthusiastic misrepresentation of the product by the man who originally designed the product for the manufacturer. The licensed distributor acted in good faith as a de facto agent of the manufacturer. To say these growers were "not skilled" and "low grade" is to make sweeping judgemental and speculative statements -- you have no first-hand knowledge or documentation whatsosever to back up these statements.



Roth said:


> and the unregistered chemical that is very dangerous is called ' iron sucrate', which is a trade name for a organically chelated blend of iron, citric/malic acid and carbohydrates, not really something 'dangerous' at all. The worst would be that the iron is unavailable, but there are good evidences that it is a suitable iron source, even if it is a recent newcomer.


Iron sucrate is a combination of iron in a reducible oxide form with a reducing sugar which react together to form iron carboxylates. The iron becomes biologically available at relatively high concentrations.
__________________

Clearly this case will be appealed in the courts and argued over by those in the business for years to come. My position remains that this product was not properly tested in trials and proven safe and effective for use in the manner it was clearly marketed to be used by company representatives. Application guidelines and misuse warnings were not made clear enough to potential users, and farmers have suffered serious damages because of the designer's, the manufacturer's and the distributor's rush to score a profit. A 12-person jury agrees.


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## Ray (Feb 24, 2012)

Roth said:


> For fun, Mr. Yen, who is the best Paphio concolor grower in Thailand, and won many awards for his concolor and exul, indeed use Multicote, the very same brand and rate as the trial. He puts about two tablespoon for a 20 cm pot....



Is there only one Multicoat? Doubtful. Taking a quick peek at the Griffin website, I see 15 different Osmocote formulas. It seems highly unlikely that Mr. Yen and the farmers involved in the suit were using the same product.


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## NYEric (Feb 26, 2012)

If you substitute ingredients in a 'named' product you change the formula - violation! I'm sure the manufacturer will appeal and the award will be reduced and yes, Liars, er, I mean lawyers are overpaid! oke:


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