Agricultural Lawyer Praises Courage Of Farming Family After Crop Fiasco Payout

A leading agricultural lawyer has praised the courage of a North Wales farming family after they won a legal battle with farm specialists who presided over a failed crop of fodder beet.

Crop care business Spunhill Farm Sales Limited based in Ellesmere, Shropshire, were ordered to pay MM & DM Jones of Ruthin, Denbighshire, over £40,000 in compensation.

Spunhill had initially taken legal action against the Jones’s over a debt claim for £8,602 for ‘seed, fertiliser and other agricultural materials’ supplied over three months in 2009.

Marina Jones and Malcolm Jones, who farmed the land with his brother Will, successfully counter claimed, arguing that Spunhill had failed to exercise reasonable care and skill while applying pesticides to 42 acres of rented land in Ness, Wirral.

Broad leaved weeds including fat-hen, wild oats and charlock in fodder beet crop led to crop failure and a reduced 20% yield compared to what was reasonably expected, said the Jones’s.

During a five-day hearing at Chester County Court the judge was told how a ‘canopy of weeds’ took hold and that upon harvest ‘for commercial purposes, the crop was a mess’ yielding 6.2 tonnes per acre compared to an anticipated yield of 34 tonnes per acre.

In his ruling published on 21st November 2014 His Honour Judge Halbert ruled in favour of the Jones’s.

The judge was critical of Spunhill’s consultant Tony Cowgill, saying that he was was ‘not a satisfactory witness’ and that ‘it was quite clear that his evidence in detail was dangerously inaccurate.’

“It follows in my view that the management of this crop by Tony Cowgill on behalf of Spunhill fell very substantially below the standard required of a professional agronomist and that in high probability this failure was the major cause of the failure of the crop.”

In his observations the judge stated that “the conduct of these proceedings by the claimant (Spunhill Farm Sales Limited) were lamentable’.

Speaking after the judgement, the Jones’s solicitor David Kirwan, senior partner and agricultural specialist with North West law firm Kirwans, said: “It has been a difficult, upsetting time since 2009 for our clients and I am delighted that the court has ruled in their favour.

“This was a fiasco by Spunhill and their consultant from the start. The unprofessional service was compounded by the Jones’s complaint being treated with contempt, then the family being taken to court for refusing to pay for the seeds and fertiliser. Finally, they were confronted with inaccurate and contradictory evidence during the trial.

“Needless wrangling due to Spunhill spurning no less than four separate offers by our clients to settle the litigation over the last two years may have seen less courageous people cave in. The massive legal costs now facing Spurnhill have been ratcheted up by their stubborn determination to fight the case to the bitter end.

“The Jones family has delivered a triumph for justice that the wider farming community should take heart from.”