State to rethink 271 charges in Ag-Mart case

The state revived its ailing case against tomato grower Ag-Mart on Tuesday, when the Pesticide Board voted to reconsider 271 serious charges against the company.

An administrative law judge had previously recommended throwing out the charges without a full hearing.

Now, the company will likely have to spend many more months fighting allegations that it forced its workers to illegally labor in fields freshly sprayed with chemicals.

"Those issues should have been addressed in a hearing," Pesticide Board member Robin Smith said.

The decision means that the three-year-old case, which is the largest pesticide case in state history, is far from over. The details of a new hearing have yet to be worked out.

After reviewing the case for nearly eight hours Tuesday, the seven-member board agreed to continue reviewing the Ag-Mart case next Tuesday.

Ag-Mart attorneys could not be reached for comment after the meeting. Ag-Mart has denied exposing workers to pesticides and argued that the state's case was based on flawed documentation that gave conflicting reports about where workers were picking vegetables on any given day.

Ag-Mart, based in Florida, farms about 700 acres in Brunswick County, about 125 miles south of Raleigh, and employs several hundred migrant workers. Until recently, the company also grew tomatoes in nearby Pender County. It sells tomatoes under the brand names Santa Sweets and Ugly Ripe, as well as under several store brands.

Between December 2004 and February 2005, three Ag-Mart workers bore babies with severe birth defects. One child had no arms and legs, and another had no visible sex organs and died soon after birth. The birth defects touched off an investigation of the company's practices in North Carolina and Florida.

$184,500 fine sought

In 2005, state pesticide officials charged Ag-Mart with 369 violations of state pesticide law and asked for a fine of $184,500 -- the largest ever levied.

The company has been fighting the case ever since.

Daunted by the case's complexity, the Pesticide Board sent it to the Office of Administrative Hearings for review. The state's case was greatly weakened when two administrative law judges recommended dropping all but 17 of the charges and fining the company only $6,000.

The biggest blow came when one of the judges, Beryl Wade, threw out 271 of the most serious violations without a hearing, saying the state had based all of those charges on field documents that were erroneous, sometimes logging one worker in several fields across two different counties on the same day.

But the judge's ruling was not binding, and final authority on the case rests with the seven-member Pesticide Board. The board is appointed by the governor and includes employees of several state agencies, farm and pesticide industry representatives and at-large members.