CHAPTER 30
TOTAL WAR
Hatred isn’t something you’re born with. It gets taught.
—Mississippi Burning
As the McGowan trial winds to a close, the tension in the courtroom reaches a boil, and the lawyers again come to blows. This time, the skirmish is between Mona Wallace and an attorney hired by Smithfield to represent Joey Carter. At issue is the concealment of documents.
For weeks, Mona has been laboring to obtain records from the Duplin County Soil & Water office relating to the early days of Carter’s hog operation. All state-held records should have been produced during discovery, but a few of the oldest documents slipped through the cracks, or so the growers’ lawyer wants Judge Britt to believe. In Mona’s mind, the excuse is hogwash. She is certain that both the Soil & Water people and the growers’ counsel have stonewalled her on production because they know what the old documents contain—a piece of evidence that would damage Joey Carter’s credibility and Smithfield’s case.
Now, at last, she has proof. Two nights ago, the growers’ attorney finally coughed up the last of the missing documents. They are damning.
From the beginning of the trial, Smithfield has held up Joey Carter as a paragon of the grower community, a family man, and a public servant. When he was on the stand, Carter painted his own self-portrait using the same gilded strokes. The former police chief claimed that he could not understand the neighbors’ allegations about his hog farm.
“I had no indication there was an odor issue,” he told the jury.
Kaeske, acting surprised, replied, “I need to write that down. I never had—say what you said again. Never had any indication that there was an odor issue?”
“Right,” Joey reiterated. “I’ve never had a complaint from anybody.”
The old Soil & Water documents prove the opposite.
In March of 1985, when the state and federal regulators were helping Joey lay out his first lagoon and barns, a Soil & Water official wrote the following note: “Had three calls (Perry Williams, Linnill Farland, Laurie Jackson) from neighbors complaining about the lagoon being so close to their property. It will be about 850′ from Mr. Farland’s home, and there are 11 houses within about 1500′. Mr. Jackson said he and his brother plan to put a residential development on their field, adjacent to the lagoon. Discussed the problems that might be caused by neighbors in future with Joey, but he is determined to proceed.”
Two months later, the same official made another handwritten note: “Joey said he has heard that his neighbors plan to sue him for damaging their property values.”
Had these documents been properly disclosed, Mike Kaeske would have wielded them like a battle-axe and used them to punish Joey Carter on cross-examination. He would have been able to establish, beyond dispute, that one of Smithfield’s primary defenses—that the neighbors never complained—was a bald-faced lie. But the records didn’t come to light in discovery. They stayed buried until two nights ago.
When Smithfield rests its case, Judge Britt takes the matter up out of the presence of the jury. Mona lays out the story for him: the letters and emails she sent requesting the missing records; the visits her team made to the Soil & Water office (where Joey Carter’s son now works); the people who told her that no more documents existed; then the eleventh-hour surprise—news that the growers’ attorney had just waltzed into the Soil & Water office and left with the documents. At that point, Mona demanded that the Soil & Water people furnish her copies as well. She sent Maryclaire Farrington to collect them, but the Soil & Water people dragged their feet. They said the copies wouldn’t be available until July 13, after the trial’s conclusion.
By now, Mona’s suspicions were piqued. She demanded that the growers’ attorney turn them over. The lawyer rebuffed her at first. The documents were public, he said. They had been sitting in the Soil & Water filing cabinet since 1985, and Mona could have obtained them by a simple public records request. Mona explained that she had already jumped through every hoop required by the law, yet Soil & Water continued to dither. Only then, when Mona found herself in a bureaucratic box canyon and Joey Carter was off the stand, did the attorney disclose the records. In fact, he made it look like he was doing Mona a favor.
Judge Britt is decidedly unimpressed. Indeed, he is disturbed. But he can’t change the past. What he can do is upbraid the growers’ attorney. He tells the lawyer that while he may have complied with the letter of the law, he didn’t comply with its spirit. Indeed, he accuses the man of bad faith. He also lays into the Soil & Water people.
“What’s going on down in the Soil & Water Conservation office in Duplin County smells to high heaven,” he says. “I can smell it here stronger than I smell the hog odor that’s the subject of this lawsuit.”
Unfortunately, as a federal judge, he has no authority to reprimand local officials. He promises to investigate the matter, but no one on the plaintiffs’ side of the aisle expects anything to come of that.
As for the regulator’s notes, the best the judge can offer the plaintiffs is the chance to admit them into evidence. Mike Kaeske isn’t allowed to read the notes out loud to the jury because he isn’t a witness. But the jury will have access to them in deliberations. And, maybe, a few of the jurors will take the time to read them and discern their meaning.
The neighbors complained. Joey Carter knew it and didn’t care.
On Monday, June 25, while Mike Kaeske and Mark Anderson are in the well of Judge Britt’s courtroom delivering their closing arguments, the hog barons and their allies take to the streets to give vent to their rage. Buses descend on Raleigh from all points down east, ferrying hundreds of hog farmers and their families to the Bicentennial Plaza, a wide pedestrian mall connecting the Capitol building to the General Assembly. In the sultry heat of afternoon, a bevy of political heavyweights strut across the stage and stir up the crowd.
Jimmy Dixon is there, with his consigliere from the state senate, Brent Jackson. The Duplin representative kicks off the rally with a hoary quote from Thomas Jefferson: “ ‘Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling, for they who labor the earth are the chosen people of God.’ ” Raising his fist to the sunbaked sky, Dixon cries out, “Let us all who are here today and believe this shout and cheer for joy!”
After a beat, the crowd erupts.
The lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, speaks. A Republican with a Democrat for a boss, he wants nothing more than to boot Roy Cooper from the governor’s mansion. Lately, he’s been cuddling up to the rural white vote down east. It’s not his native demographic. He’s a big city architect from Charlotte. He shows up at the rally looking like a venture capitalist who just stepped out of a pitch meeting. He doesn’t even take off his blue iridium sunglasses when he assumes the podium. But he has a silver tongue and a penchant for populism. After an ode to the American farmer, he takes a swipe at the industry’s favorite bogeyman. “We don’t need big-time lawyers from California, New York, and other places coming here and telling us how to raise our animals and grow our crops in this state. We can do that just fine for ourselves.”
After Forest comes Steve Troxler, the state commissioner of agriculture, his helmet of snow-white hair shimmering in the sun. He pushes the laudatory rhetoric to the stops. “I hope the people of this nation and this state will wake up and revere you,” he says. “Not challenge you, not take you to court, but revere you.”
As the speechifying continues, a few blocks away, up on New Bern Avenue, Mike Kaeske is offering the twelve jurors in Judge Britt’s courtroom a contrary take on this moment in history.
“This is not normal agriculture,” he argues. “Sticking five thousand hogs in buildings a thousand feet from people’s houses, that’s not normal. It’s different. Okay, you want to do it differently? Do it differently. That’s fine. We’re not opposed to you doing it differently. But your property rights stop where our property rights start.”
He pleads with the jurors to trust their instincts. “Common sense tells you that seven million gallons of feces and urine stored in an open-air pit a thousand feet from someone’s house is going to stink. There aren’t many different ways you can say it stinks.”
He asks the jury to take a peek behind the curtain, to spot the fallacy in Smithfield’s fear-mongering. “They want to talk about how it would be devastating to the community if Smithfield left. Who wants Smithfield to leave? Nobody wants Smithfield to leave. Maybe Smithfield wants you to believe that they would leave so that you would render a different verdict. But we can have hog operations, and we can have people at the same time.”
Eventually, Kaeske makes his final pitch. “The way it gets fixed is through this process. That’s why we’re here. And how we do it—how you do it—is you speak in dollars and cents, because that’s what corporations understand. It’s the way they make their decisions. You saw the document from Mr. Westerbeek that said, ‘We can’t cost-justify based on odor alone.’ You’re now part of that process. You’re now part of the process of telling Smithfield the cost they have to justify. Because if they have to justify the cost of lawsuits instead of fixing the problem, well, they’ll go fix the problem. That’s how lawsuits like this one are used to cause change and to compensate people that have been wronged.”
When at last the judge dismisses the jury, Kaeske walks down the aisle and out of the courtroom with Mona and Lisa and Sophie and the rest of his team. He offers handshakes and hugs to the plaintiffs, sees the smiles on their faces, the tears in their eyes, and feels the residual glow of accomplishment, of finishing strong. He knows about the rally underway at Bicentennial Plaza, the massing of the hog kingdom and its allies. He knows that all of those farmers think that he and Mona are the Devil’s handmaidens. The chatter on the Internet has been blistering. He’s tuned most of it out, stayed focused on the trial. But he hasn’t been able to suppress all of it. Mona has been getting calls from clients worried about the messages they are seeing on yard signs and billboards across the county. They are worried. They are intimidated. They are afraid. And there isn’t a damn thing that he or Mona can do about it.
This trial is going to end in the courthouse, but the judgment won’t remain there, especially if the verdict comes back in their favor. Like a river swollen by a storm surge, it will spill out into the community.
On the second day of the jury’s deliberations, Judge Britt takes matters into his own hands. He enters a gag order banning the lawyers, the parties, their agents, and any witnesses from talking to the media about the lawsuits, except for informational purposes. Out of concern for free speech, however, he makes no attempt to silence the war drums of NC Farm Families, the Pork Council, or Smithfield’s allies in the statehouse. Unbound by the judge’s fetters, they go right on fueling the wind shear of existential fear down east. By the time the jury reaches its verdict two days later, all of hog country is breathless, jittery, on edge.
As in McKiver, the jurors decide that Murphy-Brown has violated the Good Neighbor rule. They assign a modest value to compensate for the harm—$65,000 for Elvis and $65,000 for Vonnie. On the question of punitives, however, they wield a mace. They award the couple $12.5 million each—two and a half times what their predecessor jury awarded Joyce McKiver and her neighbors.
The response down east is hysterical. Shortly after the verdict, NC Farm Families posts a summary on Facebook with the tagline: “VERDICT: Hog farms are a nuisance.” The post is unusually subdued and scrubbed of editorializing, but the 1,400 comments from the group’s followers are not. Emotions run hot, and epithets are cast like stones.
The justice system is a “joke.” The verdict is a “disgrace,” “outrageous,” “insane,” a “gross miscarriage of justice.” The jurors are castigated as “idiots” and accused of being “manipulated and deceived.” The plaintiffs are denounced as “dumb bafoons [sic],” “heartless,” “lazy” and “free-loaders.” Many people opine that the neighbors should become vegetarians. Some say the plaintiffs should relocate: “This really ticks me off! If you don’t like the country smell of Duplin County, MOVE, because we don’t need you!” A few people go biblical: “I have to keep reminding myself that Jesus wants us to love one another. But how do you love someone who is destroying people’s livelihood all bc of greed.”
In the wake of the verdict, Joey Carter’s son posts a Facebook lament. His family is heartbroken, he writes. His father built the hog farm “with his own hands.” The trial process was a “living hell no farm family should have to endure.” In court, “very little of our story could be told.” The plaintiffs’ lawyers “will answer to GOD for the devastation and division they are causing in our community and great state of NC.” He appeals to the Fourth Circuit to deliver justice and thanks the community for standing by them. “In the coming days,” he writes, “we know it will be hard and our communities will be full of anger, hate, and a desire for revenge.” He exhorts everyone to rest in Providence. “Please remember we are all children of GOD and believers in his word and for that we will all be blessed.”
When Jimmy Dixon reads this post, however, he doesn’t light a votive candle and adopt a prayerful repose. In the wee hours of the morning, he logs on to Facebook and uncorks on Wallace & Graham, Judge Earl Britt, and Elsie Herring, whom he saw speak at the General Assembly about S711. He throws his fists low and lets the hatred fly.
“Well, Mr. Graham and Mona Lisa, how do you feel when you look at this family you have destroyed? How do you feel knowing you enabled the Texas lawyers to rape this family? Does it feel any different than when you raped the Kinlaw family? Probably not because you are getting ready to economically rape all the other families you have sued. Who trained the lady who lied to two different Committees in the General Assembly when she said, ‘My mother’s house is eight feet from a sprayfield, and my mother was a prisoner in her own house.’ ”
Dixon’s invective turns libelous. He accuses Mona and Bill of working with a fictitious “deep-pocket financier” and “pimping” the plaintiffs to “scare Smithfield into settling.” He alleges that Mona and Bill “unethically recruited” the plaintiffs to sign on to their “evil design”—even though Smithfield’s own lawyer, Mark Anderson, admitted the opposite at the state court hearing way back in 2013. Dixon accuses Mike Kaeske, whom he calls “that buzzard from Texas,” of “improper conduct in recruiting clients,” when Mike didn’t enter the case until 2015.
Dixon’s conclusion borders on self-parody. “Do you brag to your neighbors about the horrific damage you are inflicting on these good folks?” he asks. “Probably not. You probably want to lay low and avoid any sunlight which usually disinfects all kinds of slim [sic].”
Not content with lashing out on social media, the Duplin legislator submits his screed to the Goldsboro News-Argus, a local paper, which publishes it under the headline “Greedy Lawyers Force Farmers to Pin Hopes on Public Opinion.” Just as Don Butler did years ago on the stage at the Sampson County Expo Center, Jimmy Dixon summons the kingdom to fight.
“We, the people,” he writes, “must continue to rally and demand justice for the property rights of our hard-working family farmers who are in compliance with the laws and regulations that govern how they run their farms, and we must do it in the court of public opinion because we are damn sure not getting justice in Judge Earl Britt’s courtroom.”
The hog kingdom responds with total war.
Less than forty-eight hours after the verdict, the wife of one of the hog farmers involved in the suit fires up her own Facebook page and launches a brazen attack against the plaintiffs.
“OK y’all,” she writes. “Here’s the LIST (below) of all 471 NAMES to SHAME!!!!! Ya know, those who jumped onboard the ‘MONEY’ train!! PLEASE SHARE.” After a shot at the lawyers, she goes on: “Made me so darn MAD as I typed out this list and seen SO MANY ‘Familiar Names’!! Ugh…Check your ‘Friend List’ y’all…just say’n!!!!”
The comments are scorching. “Every single one of these names needs to be posted in every grocery store around eastern nc!!!!” a woman blares. “They should be forbidden to buy any kind of meat!!” Another says: “I think all these people on the list should be made to grow everything they eat. Banned completely from ever entering a grocery store or any store that sells pork or that’s grown by any farmer period!!!!” One person suggests publishing the plaintiffs’ names on a billboard along I-40. “Since these jerks don’t like farmers,” opines a woman, “they need to learn to forage like our ancestors thousands of years ago did.” “Simply disgusting!!!” someone else screams. “Hope they choke on any pork, chicken, turkey or beef!!” “I’m ASHAMED to know these ppl & even more so because almost EVERYONE on this damn list eats meat!” offers another. “Where the hell do they think it comes from?”
For the plaintiffs, being outed like this, being publicly condemned by people they know, is a terrifying experience. While none of them has suffered violence, all of them have felt the pressure wave of intimidation. Denigrated on signs, called out at rallies, and now vilified on social media, they feel exposed. They know what this post will unleash. And they are right to fear harassment. In the grip of such dark energy, the mob will soon find ways to channel its rage into reprisals. One plaintiff will nearly get run off the road by a hog farmer. Another will see her new ice cream parlor targeted with a boycott.
And it isn’t just the Black plaintiffs who are afraid. Randy Davis, one of the few white plaintiffs in the case, feels the concern acutely. He’s seen how ruthless the hog barons can be in the way they have treated his neighbor, Don Webb. The old ARSI activist has received more threats than he can count. And Randy has his own experience to rely on, too. It seems like just yesterday that he caught a strange man lurking outside his house taking photographs, while his family was getting ready for church. When Randy confronted the man, the man sped off and disappeared. But not before Randy saw the pump-action shotgun in the passenger seat. Randy called the police and filed a report. A detective tracked down the car. It was a rental. The driver, as it turned out, was an investigator working for Smithfield’s defense team.
The fallout from the McGowan verdict soon reaches beyond hog country’s borders. In Salisbury, the phones at Wallace & Graham ring off the hook with threatening calls. Enraged hog farmers carpet-bomb the firm’s Internet ratings with one-star reviews. The digital smear campaign is so comprehensive that people even trash Mona and Bill on Yelp.
In all their years of practicing law, in all their contretemps with corporate interests, neither Mona nor Bill has ever experienced anything like this. They shut down the firm’s website and Facebook page. They give thought to engaging the media and telling their side of the story, and they talk through their options with Mike Kaeske and Lisa Blue. In the end, however, they decide against it. While another law firm might hire a public relations team and mount a strategic defense, Mona and Bill would rather keep their campaign of persuasion in the courtroom.
The only hearts and minds they care to win are in the jury box.
As for Jimmy Dixon, they agree to ignore him. He’s a belligerent blowhard. They could sue him for defamation, but what would that accomplish? Better to let him bray at the moon. The power he wields is not in his pen; it’s in the levers of the General Assembly. If they contend with him anywhere, they will contend with him there.
Ironically, they feel a measure of sympathy for the frightened growers. They are little more than pistons in Smithfield’s everlasting gobstopper machine, the toil far outstripping the reward. But the industry’s propagandists have spun their illusions well. People like Joey Carter will never believe that neither Mona Wallace nor Bill Graham, neither Mike Kaeske nor Lisa Blue, wants to hurt them. They will never admit that this lawsuit is about justice and dignity for the plaintiffs. That it’s about forcing Smithfield to clean up the state.
The threats, on the other hand, the plaintiffs’ team takes seriously. Most of them are surely harmless. But with the atmosphere so charged, with so many people fearing that their incomes and way of life are on the chopping block, all it would take is one sociopath with hog farming ties to grab his AR-15, drive up to Salisbury, and storm the law offices of Wallace & Graham like Adam Lanza.
On July 3, 2018, Mona and Bill hire a private security team to stand guard outside the firm.
The Artis trial is scheduled to begin in one week.