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$370K Verdict in Bee Libel Lawsuit
Minneapolis Star Tribune (John Reinan) reports:
A Traverse County jury made the award to Nancy and Keith Budke of Wheaton, Minn. The Budkes, in the bee business for more than 40 years, sold 75 Texas hives to Nick Olsen of Maple Lake.
When Olsen got the hives home from Texas, he found that the bees had died in transit. Olsen blamed the Budkes, claiming the bees were infected with several diseases. He took to Facebook and vented about the deal, saying the Budkes were "screwing" him, calling them names and warning others not to buy bees from them.
The Budkes sued Olsen for libel, bringing in expert testimony showing that the bees' health was normal and suggesting that Olsen's own handling of the bees likely was the cause of their death.
Traverse County District Judge Amy Doll ruled in favor of the Budkes and sent the case to a jury to decide damages. In a verdict issued late last month, the jury awarded the couple $105,000 for business losses caused by the libel, $240,000 for loss of reputation and $25,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $370,000.
Thanks to the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) MediaLawDaily for the pointer.
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What an a-pollen decision.
I can’t beelieve it.
The comments here are all from old white guys. I would like to see more law students here, especially the diverses.
A suitable comment for DaivdBeehar, but you? I think not.
Dave, you misspelled your own name on this blog. Physician, heal thyself!
Zee more comments I read here, diverse they get.
This sort of thing gives me hives just thinking about it.
The local papers were all abuzz about it.
Bee hive yourself!
Literally un-bee-live-able.
I don’t get it. They died in transit, but Olsen’s conduct killed them? Did the jury conclude they were in fact alive when delivered?
Sure. He picked them up, they were in transit, he got home, he found they were dead. Maybe it was particularly hot or cold when he was driving them home, and he didn’t protect them from those extremes. Bees are not typically bred for robustness in transit.
Got it. I read too quickly. Olsen was the one who transported. I got it in my head that it was a common carrier.
I assume he drove to Texas to pick up the bees and drove them home in a trailer with insufficient regard to their well-being.
Really,
It was my sense from the bit Eugene cited to that Olsen was the one who transported all the hives back to his home in Texas. (“When Olsen got the hives home from Texas, he found that the bees had died in transit.” Plus, the expert testimony said that Olsen’s actions probably were what killed the bees–does not seem possible if the bees were dead upon delivery and if Olsen had had no contact with the bees during the transportation process.)
Eugene,
I’ll note that the linked story is behind a paywall, so it’s not accessible to your dear readers. And the MediaLawDaily link is broken. (At least, I get a 404 Error message each time I try.)
It was my sense from the bit Eugene cited to that Olsen was the one who transported all the hives back to his home in Texas.
Well, no. Olson lives in Maple Lake, MN. He transported the bees from TX to his home in MN, which is evident not only from the fact that we’re told that Olson lives in Maple Lake, but also the…
When Olsen got the hives home from Texas
…part. Although not explicitly noted, it would appear that the Budkes own hives in multiple states, including TX.
Do’h. Stupid lack of Edit button. 🙂
The facts of this case are really unclear. Both the Budkes and Olsen are apparently from Minnesota – but the bees are from Texas.
The bees being from Texas is completely normal. You can’t buy packages until it’s warm enough to split the colony – which up north is so late in the season that it’s not worth doing. Almost all us northern beekeepers buy our packages from southern beekeepers. Are the Budkes running a migratory business with beekeeping operations in both MN and TX? There are beekeepers who do that but they typically handle their own transportation of colonies.
It seems more likely that the Budkes are retailers who buy packages from a Texas beekeeper and resell them locally. This also is a common practice in the industry. But in that scenario, it’s almost always the retailer who transports the bees back north.
Now, Olsen would definitely be responsible for transporting his bees from the retail location to his own apiaries. And there are many ways to screw that up. When you’ve got 75 hives, the most common mistake is to pack them too tightly together. Honeybees are highly exothermic and will cook themselves to death on even a modest day if they don’t have adequate ventilation. And ‘adequate ventilation’ in this context means ‘packages stapled to slats that maintain a 3″ air gap all around for highway-speed wind to rush through’. The second-most-common mistake is to fail to get the package into a proper hive fast enough on arrival – again, they cook themselves. The third-most-common is again to fail to get them into a hive fast enough but they starve.
So I don’t doubt the expert testimony that Olsen is probably the one who killed the bees – but you can’t easily tell that from the article.
And Olsen represented himself. I wonder whether he decided he didn’t need counsel, or he couldn’t find anyone to represent him.
I assume it was a matter of finances. As a defendant in a libel action, you’re going to have to pay your attorney an hourly rate (with total fees totaling tens of thousands if it goes to trial), or have an insurance defense attorney assigned to defend you if you happen to have insurance that will cover a libel claim.
I assume he didn’t have the insurance coverage, and couldn’t afford a defense attorney out of pocket. If so, plaintiffs may end up having most of the judgment discharged in bankruptcy. (I don’t think you can discharge punitive damages, but I may be wrong.)
Based on just the headline, I figured that this would involve the Babylon Bee.
Where is Beenie Sanders ranting about the awful treatment of bees in transportation?
My dad was a beekeeper and heat will kill bees in a heartbeat. He let them get too hot. Rossami has it figured out.
We have this sourwood honey in WNC that people kill for. My dad used to pull the supers out just laden with sourwood honey. Them was the days. Mmmmm Mmmmm. I can taste that stuff in my mind’s taste buds at this very minute. Nectar of the gods! Land flowing with milk and honey!
I bought some “sourwood” recently and it went to sugar. It reminded me of Thoreau complaining that he had found a trout minnow in his milk.
Thanks! I learned some stuff from (some of) these comments. It was stuff about bees and bee-keeping, which has no practical use in my life, but it’s interesting.
He didn’t get Budkes.