Opinion ID: 2111141
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Prior Iowa case law regarding preemption under FIFRA.

Text: As was the situation in Ackerman, the preemptive effect of 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b) is the issue we must examine in this case. Before considering whether plaintiff Wright's claims against American Cyanamid are preempted by FIFRA, we believe it helpful to first briefly review what we said in our prior cases concerning the preemption issue. In Clubine v. American Cyanamid Co., 534 N.W.2d at 386, farmers sued the manufacturers of certain herbicides alleging: (1) defendants' herbicides were defective and unreasonably dangerous; (2) defendants breached an implied warranty of merchantability; (3) defendants breached an express warranty; and (4) defendants negligently failed to test, label and provide adequate instructions and warning regarding use of the herbicides. We concluded that plaintiffs' claims that the herbicides were defective and unreasonably dangerous, and that defendants breached an express warranty or an implied warranty of merchantability, were label-based claims because they depended upon requirements in addition to-or different from-those imposed under FIFRA. Id. at 387. We thus concluded that those claims were preempted. We further concluded that plaintiffs' claims charging defendants with negligence in testing their products were not preempted, but that the district court properly dismissed plaintiffs' negligent testing claim for lack of evidence. Id. at 388. In doing so, we did not elaborate on how to determine whether a claim is a challenge to a manufacturer's testing of a product or a disguised label-based claim. Schuver v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co., 546 N.W.2d 610, was our next discussion involving the preemption doctrine and FIFRA. In Schuver, plaintiff's claims were based on the allegation that defendant's herbicide, Preview, caused crop damage because of residual carryover that adversely affected the next year's crops. Plaintiff alleged that defendant was negligent in (1) marketing the Preview; (2) failing to withdraw the Preview from sale after learning of crop damages caused by it; (3) failing to test Preview in O'Brien County, Iowa, soil types; and (4) failing to notify O'Brien county farmers in a timely manner of the propensity of Preview to carry over. Id. at 613. We characterized plaintiff's negligence claims as really a single claim that the Preview label should have warned against using Preview in O'Brien County because the land in that county has a tendency to have a pH factor greater than 6.8 and that this caution was information that should have been on the label. Id. at 614. However, because the Preview label already cautioned that Preview should not be applied to soils with a pH factor greater than 6.8, we concluded that plaintiff's claims were preempted because specific reference on the Preview label to use of Preview in O'Brien County would have been additional or different information from that required under FIFRA. Id. at 614-15. Our decision in Schuver, therefore, clearly established the rule that any claim concerning an additional warning to the customer/plaintiff regarding use of the product is a challenge to the content of the label and is thus preempted. We most recently addressed the preemption issue in Ackerman v. American Cyanamid Co., 586 N.W.2d 208. Ackerman also involved a claim by a farmer for alleged carryover damage to his crops caused by defendant's herbicide known as Scepter. Plaintiff sought recovery on two theories: breach of implied warranty of merchantability and negligent design and testing. Following an earlier decision by the district court and one by our court of appeals, the district court on remand dismissed plaintiff's breach of implied warranty and negligent-design-and-testing claims, based on its belief that it lacked authority to hear the case because the claims were preempted by FIFRA. On appeal, we concluded that plaintiff's breach of implied warranty claim was really a challenge to the label and was thus preempted. Id. at 213. Our reasoning was that plaintiff's claim was that if the Scepter label had been different concerning the waiting period between the application of Scepter and the planting of corn, the label would have been merchantable. Id. at 213-14. We also concluded that plaintiff's claim for negligence in marketing Scepter was a common-law-duty-to-warn and was therefore preempted by FIFRA. Id. at 214. Additionally, we stated that plaintiff's negligent-design-and-testing claim illustrated that [t]he line between a claim for mislabeling and a claim for a defective product is razor thin, and can turn on `whether one could reasonably foresee that the manufacturer, in seeking to avoid liability for the error, would choose to alter the product or the label.' Id. (quoting Worm II, 5 F.3d at 747). We ultimately concluded, however, that Ackerman's negligent-design-and-testing claim was not preempted. In doing so, we distinguished Ackerman's claim from that raised in Schuver by noting that Ackerman's claim also alleged a design defect in the production of Scepter, in addition to a negligent testing claim. Id. at 215. We noted that plaintiff Ackerman argued that [t]he defect in Scepter was that it carried over to the following crop year and negatively affected the corn yield, and that American Cyanamid should have discovered through testing that there was a carryover problem. We further noted that evidence in the record showed that American Cyanamid knew Scepter caused carryover damage, yet rushed Scepter onto the market so farmers would purchase its product rather than that of their competitors. Id. We said: In essence Ackerman does not simply allege that adequate testing would have caused American Cyanamid to alter the Scepter label, but directly asserts that adequate testing and proper design would have caused American Cyanamid to alter the product itself. By recognizing the negligent-design-and-testing claim, we are not requiring information on the Scepter label different from or in addition to the information FIFRA requires. We are simply recognizing an affirmative duty on manufacturers of potentially dangerous chemicals to guard against design or manufacturing defects in their chemicals. This does not interfere with FIFRA's purpose of requiring uniform national standards of labeling. Id. Our decision in Ackerman thus established the rule that a claim based on negligent or inadequate testing will not be considered a disguised label-based challenge if adequate testing would have caused the manufacturer to alter the product itself. Conversely, the rule is that if defendant could remedy any problems with its product, that it learned about through adequate testing, by altering the product's label rather than by changing the product, then any challenge concerning negligent testing is preempted. Thus, analyzing whether a negligent testing claim is preempted by FIFRA will focus on whether plaintiff has shown that the product in question was defective and how defendant could remedy that defect-by changing the label or by changing the product.