{"id":11959,"date":"2023-03-20T01:24:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T06:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrilife.org\/texasaglaw\/?p=11959"},"modified":"2026-04-17T15:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T20:13:00","slug":"texas-supreme-court-analyzes-herbicide-drift-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrilife.org\/texasaglaw\/2023\/03\/20\/texas-supreme-court-analyzes-herbicide-drift-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Supreme Court Analyzes Herbicide Drift Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion in\u00a0Helena Chemical Co. v. Cox<\/em>, a case pitting cotton farmers against an aerial herbicide applicator. [Read opinion here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plaintiffs grow cotton in Mitchell County, Texas.\u00a0 They allege that defendant, Helena Chemical Company (“Helena”), supervised aerial application of Sendero, a herbicide primarily used to kill mesquite trees, on the Spade Ranch.\u00a0 Plaintiffs claim that the Sendero sprayed on the Spade Ranch over several days in 2015 and 2016 drifted and damaged their cotton crops.\u00a0 They blame this drift for reduced yields on over 14,000 acres of cotton across hundreds of miles in Mitchell County.\u00a0 The plaintiffs gathered only “limited evidence” of the damage at the time it was noticed and at the time of harvest.\u00a0 Many of the plaintiffs filed insurance claims attributing their crop losses to drought or other adverse weather conditions.\u00a0 The fields they claim were damaged are located between 1.8 miles and 25 miles from the locations on the Spade Ranch where Helena sprayed the Sendero.\u00a0 The Court noted that location of the fields “follows no discernable pattern” noting that “some fields are bunched together, while some are isolated many miles.”<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs claim, and Helena does not dispute, Sendero is highly toxic to cotton plants, and should only be applied with the risk of drift is minimal, which is stated on the label.\u00a0 The plaintiffs allege Helena did not follow the label instructions and instead sprayed when weather conditions, including wind, temperature, and humidity, were problematic. They also allege the Sendero was sprayed at too high of an altitude, resulting in drift.<\/p>\n

After Helena’s application, the plaintiffs filed a complaint with the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA).\u00a0 A TDA inspector investigated and found the Spade Ranch application of Sendero was a possible cause of their crop damage.\u00a0 He found “markers” for aminopyralid and clopyralid, the active ingredients in Sendero, but was unable to find a consistent pattern or drift pattern of crop damage over the large area where the fields were located.\u00a0 TDA’s inspector conducted a visual inspection but did not conduct any laboratory tests.\u00a0 When deposed, the inspector could not explain the difference between “markers” for aminopyralid and clopyralid.<\/p>\n

Litigation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plaintiffs filed suit against Helena seeking damages for their cotton crop, as well as mental anguish damages and punitive damages.<\/p>\n

Helena filed a number of dispositive motions.\u00a0 The trial court granted Helena’s motion for partial summary judgment and dismissed the claims of mental anguish, gross negligence, and punitive damages.\u00a0 The court then granted Helena’s Motion to Strike the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses as to causation, and granted Helena’s summary judgment motion on causation, rendering judgment for Helena.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs appealed, and the Eastland Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the expert testimony should have been admitted and, had this evidence been in the record, summary judgment for Helena on the causation issue would have been improper.\u00a0 The Court of Appeals did affirm the partial summary judgment on claims of punitive damages and mental anguish damages.<\/p>\n

Helena sought review from the Texas Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Texas Supreme Court Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Texas Supreme Court sided with Helena, issuing a take-nothing judgment on all claims.\u00a0 [Read Opinion here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

The issue before the Court was whether the plaintiffs’ evidence raised a genuine issue of material fact as to causation.\u00a0 The key inquiry into that question is “whether the plaintiffs’ experts offered reliable\u00a0<\/em>evidence of causation.”\u00a0 To analyze this, the Court considered the testimony of the plaintiffs’ experts as though admitted, and then asked if this evidence raised a genuine issue of material fact as to causation.<\/p>\n

The Court noted that it was important to emphasize the injury for which the plaintiffs seek recovery here is not damage to the cotton plants such as wilted leaves, but instead it is the financial injury caused by decreased revenue from a reduced yield at harvest. Because of this, the Court stated, “it is not enough for the plaintiffs to show that drifting herbicides reached their plants and ‘damaged’ them in some way.\u00a0 Instead, they must show that Helena’s application of Sendero caused their plants to yield less cotton at harvest.”\u00a0 At the summary judgment stage, they must offer some evidence to create a genuine issue of fact as to whether Helena’s application of Sendero caused the reduced crop yield.<\/p>\n

Lay testimony of plaintiffs<\/span><\/p>\n

Plaintiffs argued that in addition to the expert testimony, the lay opinions of the farmers themselves about the cause of their crop failure can provide evidence of causation.\u00a0 The Court disagreed, noting that “determining whether a particular application of aerial herbicide substantially contributed to the failure of crops miles away requires knowledge and analysis of scientific matters beyond the competence of laymen.”\u00a0 There could be a number of reasons that plants “become sickly or die,” and the “expected aerial migration of herbicide particles over vast distances due to weather conditions and spray techniques” is simply not a matter in which lay people are generally familiar.\u00a0 Thus, this testimony could not prove causation.<\/p>\n

Field by field analysis<\/span><\/p>\n

Helena argued that the plaintiffs must show toxic exposure at a sufficient dose for each “field” for which they seek recovery.\u00a0 Helena asked the Court to rely on the USDA FSA’s “field” designations to enforce this requirement.\u00a0 The Court rejected this argument.\u00a0 “Although the USDA’s field designations provide a convenient way to categorize vast swaths of farmland, we cannot say that as a matter of law every plaintiff in a crop-loss case must proffer field-by-field proof using the USDA’s field boundaries.”\u00a0 However, this does not mean proof of exposure is not required for each area where a farmer claims damage.\u00a0 “The plaintiff must show causation for the entire area for which he seeks recovery, and using the USDA’s field designations may be a useful way to do so.”\u00a0 However, the Court held that a plaintiff may go about offering that proof, and a defendant may go about opposing it, how they see fit.\u00a0 The Court will not impose a USDA field boundary proof requirement in all cases.<\/p>\n

Crop exposure to Sendero<\/span><\/p>\n

The plaintiffs were required to show their crops were exposed to Helena’s Sendero.\u00a0 The Court noted that an obvious way to show that would have been laboratory tests from locations throughout the affected area, coupled with evidence the tested areas are representative of the whole area for which damage is claimed.\u00a0 The plaintiffs did not offer this type of evidence.<\/p>\n

Instead, they presented positive lab results for clopyralid for only 3 identifiable locations.\u00a0 Three or four other tests showed the presence of clopyralid at unknown locations somewhere in the allegedly damaged areas.\u00a0 Additionally, the plaintiffs offered no test results showing the presence of aminopyralid, the other active ingredient in Sendero.\u00a0 The plaintiffs’ experts testified that herbicides other than Sendero contain clopyralid, but only Sendero contains the combination of both clopyralid and aminopyralid.\u00a0 Therefore, the laboratory tests did not establish the presence of Sendero, as opposed to other herbicides containing clopyralid, anywhere in the plaintiffs’ fields.\u00a0 There was no expert testimony that offered a reliable way to “extrapolate from the small number of positive lab tests any conclusions at all about the presence of clopyralid–much less Sendero–in the rest of the vast and scattered acreage for which recovery is sought. While the plaintiffs do not have to test every field in order to survive summary judgment, they do have to show that the acreage for which they actually have the scientific evidence for is representative of the larger area for which they seek recovery.”\u00a0 They potentially could have done this, opines the Court, by showing that the location of the positive tests relative to the aerial application are such that the herbicide must have drifted through other, untested areas to reach the tested area.\u00a0 Or, they could have proffered a recognized model of the herbicide’s drift through the air onto the allegedly affected properties.\u00a0 They attempted neither. In fact, they admitted the scattered drift pattern in this case does not match the usual predictable drift pattern, and their experts admitted they could not explain the scattered drift pattern.\u00a0 They offered no modeling, no scientific studies, and no other evidence to support their speculation that drift from Helena’s Sendero application must have occurred.<\/p>\n

Importantly,\u00a0 the Court noted that it does “not suggest that precision of proof is required in such a case” nor does it suggest “a rigid requirement that such cases must always be provided with scientific modeling of the aerial-drift pattern or with any other precise category of evidence.”\u00a0 But, the Court noted, “it defies reason to suggest that Helena’s aerial application of Sendero landed in roughly equal quantities on 111 fields scattered across hundreds of square miles of Mitchell County.”\u00a0 To prove causation, the plaintiffs needed more than the “assumptions and speculations” offered that are simply insufficient.<\/p>\n

Dosage<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, the Court looked at another important facet of causation in toxic exposure cases, the dosage.\u00a0 Plaintiffs are required to establish with evidence the dosage required to produce the alleged injury.\u00a0 Here, however, the Court noted there was “simply no evidence at all” about the amount of Helena’s Sendero that allegedly landed on the plaintiffs’ crops miles away from the Spade Ranch. Plaintiffs’ expert testified he did not reconstruct how much Sendero drifted onto any specific field.\u00a0 There was no evidence that the unspecified amount of Sendero that allegedly landed on the fields was sufficient to make the drift a substantial factor in the lost crop yields. In fact, two of Plaintiffs experts testified that cotton plants showing signs of herbicide damage do not necessarily end up resulting in a reduced yield.\u00a0 None of Plaintiffs’ experts knew how much exposure to Sendero would be required to result in a reduced cotton yield.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs testified that the damaged crops were sold and did not produce the desired amount of cotton.\u00a0 They did not, however, offer evidence that the exposure to Helena’s Sendero was a substantial cause of their reduced yield.\u00a0 Reduced yields could be related to other factors such as unfavorable weather (for which many of the plaintiffs made insurance claims seeking recovery of the same losses).\u00a0 Without evidence of how much Sendero exposure occurred and how much Sendero exposure was required to cause the claimed injuries, “the factfinder could not even begin to reasonably determine whether Helena’s Sendero–rather than something else, such as weather or other herbicides–caused the losses.”<\/p>\n

Plausible alternative causes<\/span><\/p>\n

The burden is on the plaintiffs to account for other plausible causes of the injury.\u00a0 Alternative causes do not have to be ruled out entirely, but there must be sufficient evidence for the factfinder to reasonably conclude the defendant’s action was a substantial factor in causing the injury.\u00a0 The Court notes that in this case, there are two alternative causes that are probable: weather and other herbicides.\u00a0 None of the expert witnesses accounted at all for the possible effect of weather on the reduced cotton yields.\u00a0 The record shows that some of the plaintiffs applied for crop insurance benefits claiming losses due to weather.\u00a0 The expert testimony made no attempt to account for this.\u00a0 Second, the record indicates there could have been any number of other herbicide applications in the area.\u00a0 One expert testified there are a number of other herbicides besides Sendero used during the summer months.\u00a0 The record also shows at least one other aerial Sendero application in the area not conducted by Helena.\u00a0 There was no evidence the plaintiffs’ experts considered other reasons clopyralid could have been in the tested fields, or why herbicide damage might be present other than Helena’s use of Sendero. Thus, plaintiffs failed to account for either of these alternative causes that could explain the crop damage.\u00a0 The Court held there was an “analytical gap” between the allegedly tortious conduct by Helena and the damage suffered by the plaintiffs that required summary judgment in favor of Helena.<\/p>\n

Based on this, the Texas Supreme Court issued a take-nothing judgment on all claims in favor of Helena.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n

This Opinion offers a thorough analysis of a herbicide drift case, offering insight to future plaintiffs and defendants alike into how a court will analyze such cases.\u00a0 There are a couple of takeaways that strike me.<\/p>\n

First, note that the plaintiffs reported the damage to TDA, and a TDA inspector did an investigation and prepared a report.\u00a0 Two important things here.\u00a0 First, TDA does not recover monetary damages for injured parties when alleged drift occurs.\u00a0 It is up to the injured parties to proceed against the party who allegedly applied the drifting herbicide.\u00a0 Second, note that the TDA inspector did not take any laboratory samples as part of his investigation.\u00a0 This is a good reminder for those who may be damaged by drift to consider taking their own samples and having them tested.<\/p>\n

Second, if a farmer believes there is drift damage to a crop, it is critical that he or she take care to document the damage.\u00a0 This includes taking photographs and samples of the damage when it is noticed, but also critical is to document yield damage at harvest.\u00a0 For example, in some cases, this may require segregating out the damaged crop from the remainder of a farmer’s harvest to show the yield damage.\u00a0 Another point that seems relevant to this case is the fact that some of the plaintiffs filed crop insurance claims seeking indemnity for yield damage caused by adverse weather conditions. In a situation where a plaintiff may want to file a drift damage claim, he or she may want to consider whether or not bringing that type of insurance claim is something they want to do.<\/p>\n

Third, it is almost always difficult to prove causation in a herbicide drift case.\u00a0 Being able to show that damage occurred, and that such damage was the cause of a specific chemical sprayed by a specific defendant can often be challenging.\u00a0 This case offers a good explanation of the various elements of proof that must be shown in order to prove this type of causation.<\/p>\n

Fourth, for anyone applying herbicide, this case is a good reminder of the importance of having liability insurance that covers the application of herbicides.\u00a0 This is true for a landowner doing the application himself or herself, or for anyone who may be hired to apply herbicides on behalf of another.\u00a0 Carrying liability insurance is critical as it provides insurance money for covered claims but also because is obligates the insurance company to provide a defense in a situation where a drift claim is filed.\u00a0 This means the insurance company would hire a lawyer to represent the insured in litigation over a covered claim.\u00a0 One important item to check on any farm and ranch insurance policy is to determine whether herbicide application is covered, whether there are any limits on the type of application covered (i.e. some policies allow coverage for ground application but not for aerial application), and whether there are any limitations on the amount of coverage.\u00a0 Some $1 million farm and ranch policies impose caps on coverage for pesticide or herbicide drift at much lower levels, $25,000 for example.\u00a0 Before applying pesticide or herbicide, take the time to review any potentially applicable liability insurance policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion in\u00a0Helena Chemical Co. v. Cox, a case pitting cotton farmers against an aerial herbicide applicator. [Read opinion here.] Background Plaintiffs grow cotton in Mitchell County, Texas.\u00a0 They allege that defendant, Helena Chemical Company (“Helena”), supervised aerial application of Sendero, a herbicide primarily used to kill mesquite trees, on the Spade Ranch.\u00a0 Plaintiffs claim that the Sendero sprayed on the Spade Ranch over several days in 2015 and 2016 drifted and damaged their cotton crops.\u00a0 They blame this drift for… Read More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2443,"featured_media":11963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTexas Supreme Court Analyzes Herbicide Drift Case - Texas Agriculture Law<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/agrilife.org\/texasaglaw\/2023\/03\/20\/texas-supreme-court-analyzes-herbicide-drift-case\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Texas Supreme Court Analyzes Herbicide Drift Case - Texas Agriculture Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, the Texas Supreme Court issued an opinion in\u00a0Helena Chemical Co. v. Cox, a case pitting cotton farmers against an aerial herbicide applicator. [Read opinion here.] Background Plaintiffs grow cotton in Mitchell County, Texas.\u00a0 They allege that defendant, Helena Chemical Company (“Helena”), supervised aerial application of Sendero, a herbicide primarily used to kill mesquite trees, on the Spade Ranch.\u00a0 Plaintiffs claim that the Sendero sprayed on the Spade Ranch over several days in 2015 and 2016 drifted and damaged their cotton crops.\u00a0 They blame this drift for... 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Cox, a case pitting cotton farmers against an aerial herbicide applicator. [Read opinion here.] Background Plaintiffs grow cotton in Mitchell County, Texas.\u00a0 They allege that defendant, Helena Chemical Company (“Helena”), supervised aerial application of Sendero, a herbicide primarily used to kill mesquite trees, on the Spade Ranch.\u00a0 Plaintiffs claim that the Sendero sprayed on the Spade Ranch over several days in 2015 and 2016 drifted and damaged their cotton crops.\u00a0 They blame this drift for... 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