Jury finds BLM, DuPont negligent in land case

A federal jury has found the Bureau of Land Management and E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co. negligent in the use of an herbicide blamed for damaging thousands of acres of crops across a broad swath of southern Idaho. The jury found the BLM negligent in its decision to use of the powerful herbicide Oust to control invasive weeds on public lands burned by wildfires in 1999 and 2000. The verdict reached Monday in U.S. District Court in Boise, also found DuPont responsible for selling a product that was defective and unreasonably dangerous and lacking adequate warnings. The verdict was welcome news to some of the 130 farmers whose potatoes, sugar beets, grains and corn crops were destroyed for several years when winds blew the powdery herbicide on to their nearby farmland...AP