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Florida farmer $505,000 award over gestation stall amendment affirmed
Story Date: 7/31/2013
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Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 7/30/13
Florida’s First District Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling awarding a Florida hog farmer $505,000 plus interest for improvements to his property rendered useless by Florida’s 2002 “Pregnant Pig Amendment” that disallowed gestation stall use in the state starting in 2008.
The decision, by Judge John Fishel, agreed with the lower court that when Stephen Basford shut down his integrated hog operation in 2003, unable to afford an estimated $600,000 in costs needed to stop using gestation stalls, other buildings and equipment on his farm were also unable to be used due to the functionally integrated nature of his business.
The judge agreed that the amendment “deprived him of all economically viable and reasonable use of his business for a public purpose.”
The settlement was calculated based on the inability to use these structures after November 2008, when the 2002 amendment took effect, even though Basford shut down his hog operation in 2003 in anticipation of the amendment’s effective date.
Basford did not seek compensation for any diminution in the value of his land, but rather for the improvements he had made to his hog operation. The appellate court affirmed the lower court ruling that his barns could not be used for any purpose other than raising pigs and that the wells and feed mill had no other practical purpose or use.
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