Pork giant must fork over $473.5 million in nuisance lawsuit

Odors, flies and rumbling trucks will cost the world’s largest pork producer $473.5 million in payments to neighbors of three North Carolina industrial-scale hog farms for “unreasonable” nuisances they suffered, the Associated Press reported Friday following a jury’s ruling.

The jury found that Smithfield Foods Inc. owes six neighbors who complained in their lawsuit that the company failed to stop “the obnoxious, recurrent odors and other causes of nuisance” resulting from closely packed hogs, which “generate many times more sewage than entire towns,” according to the lawsuit, accessed by the wire service.

Specifically, the jury awarded $23.5 million in compensatory damages and $450 million in punitive damages, which will be reduced to a total of $94 million under limits in state law, the Associated Press reported.