The Murphy-Brown lawsuits were 26 nuisance cases filed in federal court by about 500 neighbors of industrial hog farms in eastern North Carolina against Murphy-Brown LLC, the hog production subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. Between 2018 and 2019, juries sided with plaintiffs in all five cases that went to trial, awarding close to $550 million in combined verdicts before judges reduced those figures under North Carolina’s cap on punitive damages. All remaining cases settled in November 2020 for undisclosed terms, hours after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld the trial results.
What the Neighbors Were Complaining About
Every case centered on the same waste disposal method: the lagoon and sprayfield system. Untreated hog urine and feces flow into massive open-air pits, where the waste partially breaks down. The liquefied waste is then pumped out and sprayed onto surrounding cropland.
Neighbors said the spraying aerosolized the waste and pushed fecal mist onto their homes, cars, and yards. The odor was strong enough that residents described being unable to open windows, hang laundry outside, or hold gatherings on their own property. The lagoons also produced ammonia and methane, drew flies, and raised contamination worries for households on private wells. Health studies cited in the litigation linked proximity to these operations to elevated rates of respiratory illness, asthma in children, kidney disease, and infant mortality, though researchers said further study was needed to confirm direct causation.
Who Was Sued and Why Not the Farmers
The plaintiffs did not sue the individual contract farmers who raised the hogs. They sued Murphy-Brown LLC, the Smithfield subsidiary that owned the animals and controlled the production contracts. The theory was straightforward nuisance: the waste systems created a “substantial and unreasonable interference” with the plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their property, and Murphy-Brown, as the integrator, had the resources and authority to adopt cleaner technology but chose not to.
The suits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina under diversity jurisdiction. Plaintiffs came from Duplin, Bladen, and Sampson Counties in the heart of hog country. Murphy-Brown was incorporated in Delaware; its parent, Smithfield Foods, was based in Virginia. The Salisbury, North Carolina firm Wallace & Graham led the plaintiffs’ legal team and later won the 2020 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for the work.
All 26 lawsuits were consolidated under a master docket. The parties selected five cases for an initial discovery pool to be tried first, with the rest stayed pending those outcomes.
The Five Trials and What Juries Awarded
Senior U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt presided over the first three trials. Each ended in a plaintiff victory.
- McKiver v. Murphy-Brown (Kinlaw Farm): The first case went to trial in April 2018. On April 26, the jury awarded 10 plaintiffs $75,000 each in compensatory damages and $5 million each in punitive damages, totaling roughly $50.75 million. Judge Britt reduced the award to $3.25 million under North Carolina’s statutory cap on punitive damages, which limits such awards to the greater of $250,000 or three times the compensatory amount.
- McGowen v. Murphy-Brown: The second trial concluded on June 29, 2018, with a verdict exceeding $25 million. It was reduced to approximately $630,000 after the cap was applied.
- Anderson v. Murphy-Brown (Greenwood Farm): The third trial ended August 3, 2018, with the largest verdict of the series: $473.5 million, including $23.5 million in compensatory damages and $450 million in punitive damages for six plaintiffs. The statutory cap brought the total to roughly $94 million.
Senior Judge David Faber of the Southern District of West Virginia then took over the remaining discovery pool cases. The fourth trial, Gillis v. Murphy-Brown, involved the Sholar Farm in Sampson County. Judge Faber issued a 200-page pretrial order that restricted the scope of evidence, barring discussion of Smithfield’s Chinese ownership, other pending lawsuits, and portions of expert testimony on health impacts. The jury initially deadlocked but ultimately found for all eight plaintiffs. The awards were far more modest: four plaintiffs received just $100 each, and the largest individual award was $75,000. A fifth trial also resulted in a plaintiff verdict. Combined, the five juries awarded close to $550 million before judicial reductions.
The Fourth Circuit Ruling and the Settlement
Smithfield appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the contract grower should have been named as a necessary party, that 2014 amendments to North Carolina’s Right-to-Farm Act should apply retroactively to limit damages, and that punitive damages were improper for lawfully regulated activity. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups filed amicus briefs supporting Smithfield.
On November 19, 2020, a divided Fourth Circuit panel largely upheld the trial court. The panel rejected the argument that Kinlaw Farms was a necessary party, noting the farm operator had never sought to join the case and that Murphy-Brown’s later termination of the contract was unrelated to the litigation. The court also ruled that the 2014 Right-to-Farm amendments introduced new concepts rather than clarifying existing law, so they could not apply retroactively to defeat the plaintiffs’ claims.
The panel upheld the liability findings but remanded the punitive damages for reconsideration. It found that the trial had improperly admitted financial information about Smithfield’s parent, WH Group, which may have inflated the punitive awards.
Within hours of the opinion, Smithfield and the plaintiffs announced that all roughly 26 cases had been settled. Neither side disclosed the terms. Smithfield CEO Keira Lombardo said the company had considered the appellate court’s divided decision in reaching the agreement. Plaintiffs’ attorneys likewise declined to reveal amounts.
What Changed in North Carolina Law
Anyone looking at a similar situation today needs to know that state law changed while these cases were pending. After the first Murphy-Brown verdict in April 2018, lawmakers fast-tracked Senate Bill 711, the North Carolina Farm Act of 2018, which sharply narrowed future nuisance claims against agricultural operations:
- Standing was limited to people living within half a mile of the alleged nuisance.
- Claims had to be brought within one year of an operation’s establishment or a “fundamental change.” The law defined that term to exclude changes in ownership, technology, product type, or farm size.
- Punitive damages were restricted to cases where the operator had a criminal conviction or a regulatory notice of violation.
- Compensatory damages were limited to the reduction in fair market value of the plaintiff’s property.
Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, writing that “giving one industry special treatment at the expense of its neighbors is unfair” and that North Carolina’s nuisance laws “can help allow generations of families to enjoy their homes and land without fear for their health and safety.” The legislature overrode the veto on June 27, 2018, with a Senate vote of 37-9 and a House vote of 74-45. Representative John Blust of Guilford County was the only Republican to oppose the override, arguing that nuisance law is “a bedrock of private property rights.” The law did not apply retroactively to the pending Murphy-Brown cases, but it effectively foreclosed similar litigation going forward.
Who the Plaintiffs Were
The demographics of the affected communities became a central part of the public conversation around the cases. The plaintiffs were described as mostly Black and brown residents whose families had lived in eastern North Carolina for generations, in many cases long before the hog operations arrived. Research cited in the litigation found that within three miles of industrial hog farms, the African American population was 1.5 times greater than the white population, the Latino population 1.39 times greater, and the Native American population 2.18 times greater.
The scale of the industry in these counties helps explain the pressure on neighbors. Eastern North Carolina’s hog population grew from roughly 2 million in 1992 to 10 million by 1998. By the time of the lawsuits, hogs outnumbered humans in parts of the region by as much as 35 to 1, producing an estimated 10 billion gallons of waste annually.
A parallel Title VI complaint against the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality resulted in a 2018 settlement that required the state to involve neighbors in permitting decisions and develop mapping tools to evaluate environmental justice impacts. In January 2022, the EPA launched a new civil rights investigation into whether the state engaged in racial discrimination when issuing permits for hog farms to convert waste into biogas fuel.