A lot of people have been asking me lately about an election ad that Bill Graham is running nonstop on TV stations across North Carolina. Graham is a Republican candidate for Governor and a trial lawyer at Wallace & Graham, the Salisbury law firm that spearheaded the nuisance lawsuits against Murphy-Brown, Smithfield Foods, and North Carolina family farmers.
The ad references Graham’s efforts to “stop a Chinese company from dumping toxins on North Carolina farmers.”
It appears to reference Wallace & Graham’s role in leading the nuisance suits against Smithfield. On his campaign website, Graham says he sued Smithfield on behalf of North Carolina farmers and homeowners after the company dumped toxic material on their land.
Yes, you read that correctly. He says he sued “on behalf of North Carolina farmers…”
I’m used to seeing political ads that stretch the truth, but that’s quite the whopper.
The truth is the nuisance lawsuits were initially filed against family farmers like Joey Carter in Duplin County — not on behalf of them. (Watch the Hog Farmer documentary on Prime Video to understand how the lawsuits devastated Joey and other North Carolina family farmers.)
When out-of-state lawyers were kicked off the case for unethical behavior, Wallace & Graham re-filed the nuisance cases in federal court and went after Murphy-Brown and Smithfield. (Smithfield is owned by a publicly-traded company based in China -- but don't worry, your bacon doesn't come from China.)
When the trials began, the lawyers had to make an important choice: Were they after change in how hog farmers operate (known as “injunctive relief”) or did they want money?
Despite a lot of talk around toxins and nuisances, Wallace & Graham went for the money. And the trial lawyers didn’t hesitate to ask the jury for tens of millions of dollars.
In the end, Bill Graham and other lawyers walked away with millions of dollars. It was never about China or toxins--that’s not how our family farms operate. Graham put hard working farm families out of business while lining his pockets with money.