Hugh Bowman will lose, and deserves to
Hugh Bowman is the 75-year-old soybean farmer who bought beans at a grain elevator, planted them and is now at the Supreme Court in a patent infringement case.
Most of the media is talking about this sweet old grandpa who is so set in his ways he still uses a rotary-dial phone, tilling his little plot of land and fighting the good fight against the evil soulless corporation.
Here's the rest of it: Bowman plants Monsanto seed. He signed the standard contract that stipulates you can only plant seed containing Monsanto genetics if you buy it from Monsanto. About a decade ago, he decided to plant a late-season crop. He knew there was significant risk in this decision so, in mitigation, he went to the grain elevator, bought a dump truck load of soybeans and planted them, in clear violation of the contract he signed. He theorized this seed might be Roundup-resistant so he tested it by spraying the crop. It was.
Then he did it again for seven more years. He even bragged about doing it to his Monsanto rep.
So far, he hasn't managed to convince justices of either political persuasion of the merits of doing what he promised not to eight years in a row.
Many years ago we got the case of Canadian canola farmer Percy Schweiser, who was sued after Monsanto seed blew into his field. Bowman is different: he signed a legal agreement not to do what he did, then did it anyway.
This is really a contract law case and the potential results are far reaching: is a contract a valid legal document? If the court sides with Bowman they will nullify every contract outstanding in America today.
The last time they handed down a ruling that stupid we wound up with Ted Cruz and Steve Stockman. They won't do it again.
(No link because I can't copy and paste from Android, but Huffington Post has a good article and so does the AP.)
