The two-year-old case accusing tomato grower Ag-Mart of exposing workers to harmful pesticides will remain undecided for at least another month.

On Tuesday, more than two years after the case began, the board that has the authority to punish Ag-Mart heard the historic case for the first time. The N.C. Pesticide Board listened to nearly three hours of evidence and then conferred behind closed doors for much of the afternoon. Members said they will reconvene Feb. 12 to make a decision on whether Ag-Mart is guilty of 369 violations of state pesticide law.

Board members must review thousands of pages of documents. Ag-Mart can appeal any decision they make to Superior Court.

The Florida company, which grows about 1,000 acres of tomatoes in Brunswick and Pender counties, about 125 miles southeast of Raleigh, is accused of exposing field workers to a host of toxic chemicals. The unprecedented case is the largest and most complex pesticide prosecution in state history, and the citizen board found it so overwhelming that its members asked administrative law judges to review it.

Two judges said the state failed to prove most of the allegations against Ag-Mart and recommended dropping all but 17 violations and reducing the fine from $184,500 to $6,000. Now, the Pesticide Board must decide whether to accept that advice or discard it.

Ag-Mart lawyer Mark Ash said Tuesday that the state should accept the judges' decision. A similar case against Ag-Mart in Florida has already been settled and most of the charges dropped.

"The claims in both these cases were just wrong," Ash said. "We have now spent over two years of our time. ... It's time to call an end to the process."

But Assistant Attorney General Barry Bloch, arguing for state pesticide officials, said Ag-Mart showed a clear pattern of disregarding laws and the safety of its employees. He pointed to the handful of violations that Ag-Mart admits to: failing to have water stations for employees to wash themselves in case of pesticide exposure; failing to post the active ingredients in pesticides for employees; and burning pesticide containers despite laws against it.

"Was there a strong program of compliance?" Bloch said. "There's more than enough circumstantial evidence that there was no program."

Bloch said Judge Beryl Wade dismissed most of the charges without allowing the state to present the bulk of its evidence. Wade granted Ag-Mart's request for summary judgment, saying the state didn't have enough evidence to warrant a full hearing on 271 of the charges.

Bloch asked the board to set aside Wade's judgment and reconsider the charges.

The crux of the dispute lies in a single document, upon which the state based much of its case.

The document, prepared by Ag-Mart, appears to show the fields where workers labored on specific dates in 2004 and 2005. State investigators used that document, along with company records of when pesticides were applied, to find occasions when workers were in the fields too soon after chemical applications.

Ag-Mart officials say the document is not an exact record of where any specific employee worked but a record of the fields where work might have occurred. They pointed out, for instance, that the document shows one worker laboring in 18 fields in two counties during a single day.

"It absolutely defies common sense," Ash said.

Board member Shawn Harding, a Beaufort County farmer, said the documents raised concerns that Ag-Mart didn't have a good handle on whether safety procedures were being followed.

"I guess we're all saying we don't really know what happened in these fields," Harding said.