Texas Migrant Farmworkers Settle Disputed Employment Lawsuit About Summer Work in Nebraska Cornfields

Texas Migrant Farmworkers Settle Disputed Employment Lawsuit About Summer Work in Nebraska Cornfields

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 6, 2021

Contacts: 

Robert Elder, TRLA Communications Director | relder@trla.org, (512) 374-2764 

Ann C. Mangiameli, Managing Attorney, Legal Aid of Nebraska | AMangiameli@legalaidofnebraska.org, (402) 547-0090

LINCOLN, Neb. – Following a settlement agreement, a Nebraska federal court on March 19 dismissed a lawsuit filed by 13 migrant farmworkers from South Texas who spent the summer of 2017 detasseling corn in Nebraska. 

The farmworkers worked in Nebraska for roughly four weeks. They sued two defendants they alleged were their employers: Monsanto Co. and Gulf Citrus Harvesting and Hauling Inc. 

The suit, filed in April 2020, alleged the defendants violated the workers’ federal and state employment rights and breached their work contracts when they worked in Nebraska. Both defendants denied the plaintiffs’ claims. 

The terms of the January 27 settlement are confidential. Given the cost of litigation, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, the parties believe a compromise was the best way to resolve the dispute. The dispute was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of all parties. In reaching the Court-approved compromise, neither defendant admitted to any violation of law. 

Legal Aid of Nebraska and Texas RioGrande Legal Aid represented the migrant agricultural workers. The legal aid organizations specialize in enforcing the employment rights of migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. 

Laura Jordan of Thompson Coburn LLP and David Stefany of the law firm Allen Norton and Blue represented the defendants.

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid provides free legal services to people who cannot afford an attorney in 68 southwestern counties, including the entire Texas-Mexico border. TRLA attorneys specialize in more than 45 areas of the law, including disaster assistance, family, employment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, landlord-tenant, housing, education, immigration, farmworker, and civil rights. Our hotline is open from 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (CST) Monday – Friday: (956) 996-8752.