‘This could be huge.’ Should a Fresno County farmer get $3.7 million for fruitless harvest?
Four years ago, Kingsburg farmer Paul Willems says he bought thousands of blueberry plants from an Oregon nursery owner who promised the plants would produce an early-season crop of big juicy berries.
But after planting, watering, and waiting, he maintains the supposedly hardy plants looked sick. Willems said his dream of having a bounty of ripe berries to sell when market prices are the highest was turning into a nightmare.
Those statements and others come from a lawsuit filed by Willems against Oregon-based Gabriel Farms doing business as Oregon Blueberry Farms and Nursery.
The plants allegedly were developing slowly and failing to produce berries. At their worst, some of the plants were so feeble they snapped off at the root line, the suit says.
The nursery touts itself on its website as one of the first large blueberry farms in the Western United States and currently one of the largest wholesale blueberry nurseries in North America.
Willems is suing the Oregon nursery and its founder/president Robert Gabriel for $3.7 million. Willems alleges the nursery broke its contract with him, and he’s owed for the cost of the plants, the cost to remove the plants, and lost income.
Gabriel could not be reached for comment Friday.
Attorney D. Mitchell Taylor, who represents Willems, said the nursery owner should have paid his client for his losses, but instead, he turned around and blamed the problem on Willems.
According to the lawsuit, Willems suspected the problem was due to the method of propagation. But when Gabriel and his sales manager visited Willems in 2019, Gabriel defended the plant’s vigor and suggested something was wrong with Willems’ soil.
In the lawsuit, Taylor alleges that Gabriel knew what the problem was and wasn’t sharing it with Willems.
“The truth of the matter was that Robert Gabriel knew that the failure of the plants was caused by the Defendant’s lab work and propagation and failed to advise of that conclusion and intentionally represented that the failures were caused by soil conditions and other causes beyond the control of the Defendant in order to avoid responsibility,” the lawsuit states.
Taylor said he has a deposition from one of the company’s employees admitting the problem was on their end and not in Willems’ soil.
Taylor is also investigating if other berry growers had similar problems with the nursery’s plants. “This could be huge,” Taylor said.
Blueberries are grown throughout the U.S., with California being among the top 10 growers in the U.S. In Fresno County, blueberries were valued at $31 million and grown on 1,317 acres in 2018.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
