several items about Monsanto and the US judiciary
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Trial judge worked for firm that acted for Monsanto
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Saturday January 10, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1119991,00.html

The judge in a Monsanto price-fixing trial in Chicago has been asked to remove himself from the case on conflict of interest grounds after it emerged that he previously worked for a law firm that represented Monsanto and had been listed as a lawyer for the company.

Judge Rodney Sippel is currently presiding in a case involving Monsanto, the driving force behind the development of genetically modified food, and other major seed firms. A class-action lawsuit being brought against the company claims that Monsanto was party to a deal to fix seed prices, a claim denied by Monsanto.

Three months ago, Judge Sippel ruled in favour of Monsanto, Pioneer and other big seed firms and denied the case class-action status. He did not disclose to the parties that in 1997 and 1998 he had been listed as an attorney representing Monsanto in a similar case, according to lawyers and court documents quoted by the New York Times yesterday.

Now lawyers for the plaintiffs have written to the judge suggesting that he step down from the case. Judge Sippel has scheduled a public hearing on the issue for January 30. He is declining to discuss the matter until then.

According to the documents, before his 1998 appointment as a judge, Mr Sippel had been selected by his law firm, now known as Husch and Eppenberger, as one of a team of three lawyers to represent Monsanto in a civil lawsuit with Pioneer Hi-Bred International, another seed company. The law firm accepts that Mr Sippel was listed in court papers as one of the lawyers involved but says that, in fact, he did not work on the case.

Mr Sippel, 47, was appointed a judge by Bill Clinton and has also worked as an administrative aide for Dick Gephardt, a Democratic party presidential hopeful. Though his former employers say he never did any work for Monsanto, the fact that he had been listed as a Monsanto lawyer and had worked for a firm that handled the Monsanto account would seem to raise a conflict of interest issue. At the least, according to legal experts, Mr Sippel should have declared the relationship between his former law firm and the seed company before the case started.

"The fact that he didn't disclose it is troubling," Deborah Rhode, a professor of law at Stanford University, told the New York Times. "Courts are supposed to avoid the appearance of impropriety."

Under the US judicial code of conduct, "a judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which: the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding." Other instances include when "the judge served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom the judge previously practised law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter".

Last year, Judge Sippel awarded Monsanto $2.9m (£1.58m) in damages against a Tennessee farmer it had accused of violating a patent. In that case, Judge Sippel disclosed that he had been a lawyer for Husch and Eppenberger, and also that the firm had represented Monsanto.

The current action alleges that Monsanto held frequent meetings with its chief competitors and persuaded them to raise the price of GM seeds. Monsanto has admitted having meetings with executives of one big firm but insists these were legal discussions about seed licensing agreements.

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from the GM Watch archive:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?ArcId=1560
A GMWATCH Special Investigation
by GM Watch editor, Claire Robinson

"Judge Rejects Class Action Against Seed Producers" ran the headline to an article this week in the New York Times. The article says a federal judge has denied class-action status to an antitrust lawsuit that accused some of the world's biggest agricultural seed companies of conspiring to fix prices.

The decision is a severe blow to a case brought in 1999 by some of the nation's most prominent antitrust lawyers, who accuse Monsanto and other big agricultural seed makers of trying to control the market in GM seeds in the 1990's.

Judge Rodney W. Sippel of Federal District Court in St Louis (Monsanto1s home town) wrote in a 20-page ruling that the plaintiffs had not provided "common evidence" to show that a broad class of farmers had been affected by the conspiracy described in the suit.

Judge Sippel sided with the companies, who argued in April that the pricing data for seeds was so varied, complicated and tied to geography, seed types and other conditions that there seemed no way to prove that a large group of farmers were affected.

The lawyers who brought the antitrust suit on behalf of a group of farmers said they planned to appeal. Richard Lewis, a lawyer at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, the law firm that filed the suit, said, "The allegations of wrong doing remain, and this opinion says nothing whatsoever about those allegations.'

Just a week ago, Judge Sippel ruled that the antitrust case could go forward. But he dismissed a part of the class-action suit that sought relief for farmers who lost money after some export markets were closed to GM crops.

The lawyers who filed suit, however, have argued in court that they have already seen internal records from the seed companies that show that a conspiracy took place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/02/business/02CROP.html?ex=1065758400&en=1626d1fd395d2336&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=1550

This isn't the first time