Iowa State's Center for Agricultural Law & Taxation

In 2006, Iowa State created the Center for Agricultural Law & Taxation.  The Center's mission is to provide information to agricultural producers in important areas such as regulation and taxation.  One of the Center's points of focus is tort law.  Run by Roger McEowen, the Center keeps up with tort decisions and analyzes how they will impact agriculture.  For example, the Iowa Supreme Court recently ruled that neither the federal Clean Air Act nor the Iowa counterpart preempts common law claims of negligence, nuisance, and trespass against a grain processor (Freeman v. Grain Processing Corp., No. 13-0723, 2014 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 72 (Iowa Sup. Ct. Jun. 13, 2014).  The Center's Kristine Tidgren analyzed the opinion and made the analysis available to producers (and the public). 

Updated:  The Center just added an annotation today about the Wisconsin Supreme Court's holding that spraying herbicides is an inherently dangerous activity and, therefore, a property owner may be liable for an independent contractor/sprayer's torts.

--CJR