GRAND RIDGE, Ill. — Texas attorney Tim Maloney flies around the nation trailing lawsuits, and landed in the rural community of Grand Ridge March 24 to visit area growers, landlords, grain elevator operators, distributors, exporters and transporters about financial losses blamed on Syngenta Corp.’s genetically modified (GMO) corn seed trait known as MIR162.

“Syngenta introduced a genetically modified strain of corn before it got approval from our major export partners, including China,” Maloney told about 20 area listeners of the basis for lawsuits against the company. “(Consequently) farmers across America saw an enormous decline in their income from corn that they produced.”

Syngenta is a four-year-old global Swiss agribusiness dealing in seeds and agrochemicals, biotechnology and genomic research. Individual civil and class action lawsuits are charging Syngenta with selling MIR162 seed corn nationwide and to foreign markets, including China, a major importer, while knowing the trait had yet to be approved by the Chinese Farm Ministry.

“They were told to keep the MIR162 corn seed segregated from all other corn so they wouldn’t disrupt the export market, and it failed to do so,” Maloney alleged. “Because of that, the export market imploded, there was too much supply in the system and the price went down and farmers lost billions of dollars.”

The damage claims stem from Syngenta’s allegedly releasing second generation MIR162, known as Agrisure Duracade, into the nation’s corn and seed corn supply, according to a class action lawsuit filed in Northern District Federal Court in Chicago on Oct. 6. The complaint claims the release destroyed exports of U.S. corn to China and depressed 2013-14 market prices for all corn grown in the United States. The MIR162 trait is genetically engineered to protect corn plants against damage from more than a dozen insect species including corn borers and rootworms. China first refused to accept MIR162 corn in late 2013, then reversed its position and began taking U.S. corn again after receiving a safety certificate from its national regulatory authorities on Dec. 22.

Maloney, of the Maloney & Campolo law firm in San Antonio, said his firm is taking individual civil lawsuits with Syngenta as the defendant. This is different from class action complaints against the corporation – the latter is a type of complaint in which one or more individuals sue on behalf of a larger group of people. “This is not a class action lawsuit; rather, these will be individual lawsuits brought by farmers. There will be tens of thousands of them, but it’s not a class action lawsuit. The only people that we’re representing are the people who want to file their claims and have their voice heard,” Maloney explained.

“The bottom line of the lawsuits is that Syngenta failed to take reasonable care in how it introduced this GMO strain. It made representations to the American public and its farmers that this was an approval process that was in good shape when it was not. That caused people to grow this GMO seed. It got out and it imploded the export market and caused billions of dollars in damages.”

His firm is “working very hard already” on the complaints, but he noted this type of action tends to take a couple of years to conclusion. “My prediction is we’ll start talking to Syngenta about solving it in 2016 or 2017,” Maloney said.

“Also, we hope that the farmers will take this opportunity to try and get their money back. And, to establish an understanding with the seed companies that these companies need to responsibly introduce these (seed) traits in a way that doesn’t put the market farmer at risk with implosion of the export market.”