The state's pesticide case against tomato grower Ag-Mart is winding down. But some advocates say that the state failed to reveal the full story of what happened on Ag-Mart's farms in southeastern North Carolina -- even after months of investigation and hours of court testimony.

They point to dozens of workers who they say were willing to testify they were sprayed with pesticides. State pesticide investigators interviewed only one of them, and the assistant attorney general who tried the case didn't call any as witnesses.

"Where were the workers?" asked Fawn Pattison, head of the N.C. Agricultural Resources Center, a nonprofit that opposes pesticide use. "It was as if the state forgot what the case was about."

Ag-Mart officials say they never exposed employees to pesticides, and the state simply misunderstood company records.

Today, the N.C. Pesticide Board will meet to consider what punishment should be meted out to Ag-Mart, which is accused of exposing workers to a host of toxic chemicals.

The two-year-old case is the largest and most complex pesticide prosecution in state history, and it has challenged the citizen board charged with handling it. Board members took the unprecedented step of sending it to administrative court for review.

The two judges who heard testimony ruled that the state had based its case on flawed company documents, and recommended dropping all but 17 of the 369 charges levied at Ag-Mart. They recommended a fine of $6,000 -- down from the state's record-breaking original fine of $184,500.

Paper, not workers

Some lawyers and worker advocates say the case unraveled because state investigators relied on documents, rather than on the testimony of workers.

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, whose department oversees pesticide enforcement, declined to comment. Department spokesman Brian Long said state investigators built a strong case against Ag-Mart. He said they still believe Ag-Mart committed hundreds of pesticide violations.

"We have conducted a thorough investigation and put forth a strong case, and it's not over yet," Long said.

Long said he couldn't comment on why workers never testified. The state Attorney General's Office handled the court case, and officials there declined to comment.

Ag-Mart, based in Florida, is one of the nation's largest suppliers of grape tomatoes. The company sells tomatoes under the brand names Santa Sweet and Ugly Ripe, and several store brands.

The company runs farms in Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey and Mexico. Its farms in North Carolina, which it started 2002, cover about 1,100 acres in Brunswick and Pender counties, about 125 miles southeast of Raleigh, and employ about 500 workers, state officials say.

A similar case was brought against Ag-Mart in Florida, based largely on company records, and fell apart under scrutiny. Florida officials eventually threw out all but seven of 78 charges.

No witnesses, no case

Ag-Mart representatives said Monday that they assumed workers didn't testify in North Carolina because the state didn't have any credible witnesses.

"Ag-Mart has a good program to make sure that it satisfies the worker protection standards," said Mark Ash, a Raleigh attorney who represents Ag-Mart. "My view of it is that the state could not prove what it set out to prove, no matter what it had done."

Worker advocates, however, continue to claim there is evidence that Ag-Mart workers were doused with pesticides.

Florida lawyer Andy Yaffa is suing Ag-Mart on behalf of Carlos Herrera-Candelario, a child born to Ag-Mart workers in December 2004 in Florida. He was born without limbs, and his mother blames her frequent exposure to pesticides while she worked in North Carolina and Florida.

Carlos was one of three deformed children born to Ag-Mart workers in a three-month period.

Yaffa said he has tracked down more than a dozen current and former Ag-Mart employees who have testified under oath about pesticide exposure.

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the state did a horrific job investigating it," Yaffa said. "I could give you 15 depositions that would support all these things they were trying to prove."

Among those deposed was Cristobal Rueda Moreno, who worked alongside his wife in Ag-Mart's fields for several years.

In his deposition, Moreno said sprayers frequently came so close that chemicals landed on his skin, causing eye irritation, nose bleeds and dizziness. Once, he said, workers were doused so thoroughly that many of them threw up.

In February 2005, Moreno's wife bore a baby with several deformities, including an absence of genitals. The doctor told them it was likely because of pesticide exposure, and Ag-Mart offered them money in exchange for not suing, Moreno said in the deposition. They declined the money and later decided against suing, he testified.

Ag-Mart attorney David Stefany said Monday that Moreno was never offered a settlement.

Another worker, Yolanda Cisneros, who supervised tomato pickers, said in a deposition that she frequently saw workers exposed to pesticides on their skin.

'A big can of Raid'

Once, Cisneros said, she was sprayed so badly that she felt as though she couldn't breathe. "I felt like somebody had taken a big can of Raid and just pointed it at me and shoot," Cisneros said.

A former Ag-Mart pesticide applicator, Eric Newsome, said in a deposition that angry workers sometimes threw tomatoes at him for spraying near them.

Ag-Mart officials say dozens of workers say they were never exposed to pesticides. Some of those questioned by state investigators in North Carolina and Florida said they had had no problems with pesticides. They say Yaffa and other advocates have ignored that contingent of Ag-Mart workers.

North Carolina officials began investigating Ag-Mart in April 2005, after hearing of the deformed babies.

State investigators spent months combing company records, which were supposed to show where pesticides were applied and where workers harvested tomatoes. They also interviewed a handful of workers, one of whom said he was sometimes in the fields while pesticides were being applied, which is illegal.

In fall 2005, the state issued a lengthy notice of violation based largely on Ag-Mart documents, which state investigators said showed that workers were often illegally sent into fields freshly sprayed with pesticides. They also used the statement from the lone worker, Oscar Herrera.

The company maintained from the start that the documents were flawed, with some logs putting individual workers in different fields at the same time. Ag-Mart argued in court that its records weren't accurate enough to show where workers labored, or whether those fields had been sprayed recently with pesticides. Two judges agreed.

The judge threw out Hernandez's statement because the state failed to bring him to court. The worker's attorney, Carol Brooke of the N.C. Justice Center, said he was willing to testify but was never contacted.

No other workers testified, though some were made available by their attorneys.

Greg Schell, a Florida lawyer who has filed several class-action suits on behalf of Ag-Mart workers, said he was shocked investigators never interviewed any of the dozens of witnesses he offered up.

"It's easy to second-guess, and I recognize that as a litigator," Schell said. "But this one just seemed like a refusal to look at evidence that's being handed to you on a platter."