Opinion ID: 764355
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: For agricultural seeds.

Text: (a)The commonly accepted name of kind and variety of each agricultural seed present in excess of five per cent (5%) of the whole and the percentage by weight of each in the order of its predominance. Miss.Code Ann. § 69-3-5 (1991). 1 Peoples Gin actually was simply a farmer's co-op cotton gin that ginned farmers' cotton first, and then arranged for the sale of delinted seed that an owner farmer did not want for himself. The majority discounts the force of Peoples Gin on the ground that it involved a third party (i.e., a nonfarmer) who arranged sales of farmer-owned delinted cottonseed. This hardly is a ground to discard the law as stated in Peoples Gin. Instead, it is the precise reason why the outcome in Peoples Gin--liability--would be incorrect in this case, where the third party is but a passive conduit in farmer-to-farmer transfers, which may or may not violate the statute The majority also wrongly rejects the law as stated in Peoples Gin as dictum. The rule that active participation leads to liability (the rule of Peoples Gin ) however necessarily includes the rule that no active participation leads to no liability. An example suffices. In Case A, the trial court finds that fact X (say, active participation) is proven, and, based on that fact-finding, determines that the defendant has violated the act. In Case B under the same act, the plaintiff fails to prove fact X (i.e., fails to prove active participation), so the defendant moves for judgment of no liability as a matter of law, citing Case A. Will the court in Case B reject the rationale of Case A as dictum? I think not. Rather than struggle so to escape from Peoples Gin, I think the majority should respect and follow its rationale.