Bees, trees, preemption, and nuisance: A new path to resolving pesticide land use disputes

This Article proposes a new framework for analyzing certain claims for pesticide damages. With the Supreme Court's recent decision in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences, plaintiffs in many pesticide cases can now bring a much larger range of state law claims to recover damages for fraud, improper testing, and other claims unrelated to pesticide labeling. This Article argues that by expressly allowing such state law claims while reaffirming the importance of uniform labeling, Bates should encourage litigants and judges to rely more heavily on the label language in litigating negligence claims against pesticide users and to look more broadly to nuisance and trespass claims to obtain relief for pesticide use that complies with the label but nevertheless results in harm. Finally, this Article suggests greater emphasis be placed on new and existing state and federal statutes to obtain relief for pesticide related harm.