- AP
- Firefighter conduct search and rescue of an apartment destroyed by an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas
By Alexandra Berzon
As details emerge about the Texas fertilizer plant that was the site of Wednesday’s fatal explosion and fire, a few tidbits can be gleaned from a 2007 lawsuit that the plant’s owners filed against agribusiness giant Monsanto Co.
The suit, filed as a potential class action in U.S. District Court for the western district of Texas, claimed that Monsanto had artificially inflated prices for its herbicide Roundup through anti-competitive actions. The suit did not relate to storing fertilizer, believed to be at the root of Wednesday’s blast.
The suit was filed by Texas Grain Storage Inc. The company now calls itself West Fertilizer Co.
In the suit, the company said that it was started in 1957 as a grain-storage business by the Plasek family in the town of West, Texas. It later built a small fertilizer-blend plant and started selling fertilizer to area farmers.
Zak Covar, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told a news conference Wednesday that the fertilizer storage and blending facility had been there since 1962.
In 1970 it started selling other agricultural products, including some from Monsanto, and by 1997 it had struck a deal with Monsanto to directly purchase Roundup each year.
A court filing in 2008 indicated that Texas Grain Storage recently had been sold. Emil Plasek is listed as a former owner.
Texas Grain Storage said it monitored the Roundup, stored in a stainless steel tank, through a telephone connected to the tank, the company said.
Many documents in the case are sealed, and the public documents don’t reveal the names of the plant’s then-current owners. Texas corporation records list the president of the company as Donald R. Adair, and show a business operating as Adair Grain Inc. at the same address.
Texas Grain Storage was represented by roughly 30 lawyers at 12 firms, according to court records. One lawyer who represented Texas Grain said the suit stalled in 2010 after a magistrate judge denied a request to certify the case as a class action. The lawyer said Texas Grain appealed the ruling, and that a district judge has yet to rule on the appeal. The last public filing in the case was in 2010.
Monsanto responded to Texas Grain’s complaint by saying the company didn’t have standing to bring the case and was barred by the statute of limitations. Thursday, a Monsanto spokesman said, “The long dormant lawsuit filed by Texas Grain had nothing to do with fertilizer or the operation of the West, Texas plant.”
See also:
Full Coverage of the Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion – WSJ Streams
Well, I guess it really sucks to be us.
It is time for citizen to make citizens arrests of the MONSANTO leaders and the politicians who protect them. People need to rise up and rebel now in order to save what is left of our planet.
GMO are killing animals that eat them. No study used to get a GMO cleared by the FDA has lasted longer than 3 months. Ask the manufacturers of the products you buy if they have any GMO’s. Demand that your supermarket label GMO containing items. Be pro-active. Consumers have power but they are vastly ignorant of the dangers sitting in their kitchens. GMO’s are bringing about the depletion of the earth on which they are planted. Can we survive another Dust Bowl Era?
Pay attention to what your elected officals are doing. Tell them to represent you. Vote.
You people (Monsanto) make me sick. This whole establishment needs to be brought down. It is not going to happen through peaceful means. It is time to get violent. This is the only means by which there is going to be any chance for us to have a normal life. If not for us, then for our children or our grandchildren. They deserve better than this. But don’t take my word for it do your research. There are numerous government officials that have deep ties to Monsanto. For Christ sake Donald Rumsfeld made millions by selling his company to them. John Ashcroft had taken substantial campaign contributions. Obama signed the Monsanto Protection Act, part of the HR 933 continuing resolution, allows Monsanto to override U.S. federal courts on the issue of planting experimental genetically engineered crops all across the country. Even if those experimental crops are found to be extremely dangerous or to cause a runaway crop plague, the U.S. government now has no judicial power to stop them from being planted and harvested. Just do your research and come together as one against these monsters, before it is too late!!!!!!!!!