Cases

Petition to EPA: Industrial Agriculture is a Climate Polluter

Industrial agriculture is a major driver of climate change. However, the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to treat the industry like the climate polluter it is. That is why Public Justice led 25 climate, environmental...

Sierra Club v. Walnutdale

Everybody has the right to clean water. Yet for the neighbors of industrial agriculture operations like Walnutdale Farms in Michigan, this right is unrealized. That is why the Public Justice Food Project represented the Sierra...

McKiver v. Murphy-Brown

Hundreds of mostly Black and brown community members in Eastern North Carolina won a series of mass action lawsuits against Smithfield for the public nuisance caused by factory hog farms. It was a historic victory....

Maid-Rite (Justice at Work v. Sec. of Labor)

Public Justice, Towards Justice, Nichols Kaster, and Justice at Work filed a lawsuit in the Middle District of Pennsylvania using a never-before-tested mechanism in the Occupational Safety and Health Act, seeking to compel OSHA to enforce...

Rural Community Workers Alliance & Jane Doe v. Smithfield

With food chain workers deemed “essential” for the wellbeing of others at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but expected to continue working through their own illness, workers at Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Milan, Missouri...

Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Hormel

Public Justice, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Richman Law Group filed a joint lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court against Hormel Foods, alleging the company was misleading consumers through the advertising...

Utah Ag-gag (Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Herbert)

In a victory for transparency in the food system, Public Justice successfully challenged a Utah statute that criminalized whistleblowing in the animal agricultural industry—in particular, slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, and factory farms. The law at...

Indiana Right to Farm

Like many other states, Indiana has a “Right-to-Farm” statute, meant to codify the coming to the nuisance doctrine—so city-dwellers cannot move to rural lands and demand farms change their operations. Corporate agribusiness has, however, been...

Blackwood v. N&M Dairy

N&M Dairy was a multi-thousand cow dairy that the dumped millions of gallons of waste produced annually in surrounding open fields and earthen lagoons. The government and N&M Dairy consultants themselves warned N&M that its...

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