Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Helena Chemical Wins Defamation Suit Against New Mexico Activist
Helena Chemical Company has won its defamation suit against New Mexico social worker and community activist Arturo Uribe. In a decision Thursday that could chill the activities of nonprofits and community activists who speak out against corporations, a Dona Ana County jury awarded the company $75,000 in punitive damages. The company claimed that public presentations by Uribe utilized unsubstantiated imagery to represent Helena's operations, including images of disasters. Uribe says that he plans to appeal the ruling because he believes that what he said about the company is true. Helena Chemical, based in Tennessee, is a distributor of chemicals for agricultural, turf, forestry, landscaping and aquatics markets. The company maintains a warehouse in Mesquite, New Mexico about 30 yards from Uribe's home where chemicals are received, mixed and sold to farmers and ranchers. In early 2004, the New Mexico Environment Department first inspected Helena's warehouse, and later that year, the state issued a Notice of Violation against Helena for operating its plant without an air quality permit. In 2005, the state agency fined the company $233,777 for failure to comply with New Mexico's air quality laws and regulations...more
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You must be obtaining most of your information from the Las Cruces Sun News. It has printed biased articles against Helena in years past and continues to do so. Four of the 15 air quality violations were dropped by NMED. Of the remaining 11, most were for record keeping (the records were correct but in the wrong "format" for NMED). The most serious violation was operating with the warehouse doors open which was dropped by NMED. Did you know that most of the money for fines went to Mesquite? The elementary school, three churches, the Mesquite fire department and a community park all received money and it was proven in court that Uribe skimmed money from the church funds for himself. The jury found Uribe guilty after hearing ALL of the evidence. During the trial it was exposed that Arturo Uribe's aunt, State Senator Cynthia Nava is in a romantic relationship with Secretary of NMED, Ron Curry. Uribe is using NMED as pawn in the name of community activism.
First, the writing is not mine. If you had clicked on the "more" link you would have seen I had posted an excerpt from an article distributed by ENS News Wire.
Second, thank you for you insightful comments.
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