Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991 TAG: 9103160132
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Long
Virginia's largest farm organization has thrown its support behind the lawsuit. The Virginia Farm Bureau Federation hopes to bring a stop to local governments trying to get around a state law requiring counties to compensate farmers for livestock losses.
Steve Umberger, a Virginia Tech sheep specialist who farms near Newport, has filed a three-pronged legal action against the county for refusing to pay for loss of his sheep, which he valued at $60 apiece. No trial date has been set.
The state Farm Bureau and various county farm bureaus are helping pay for the lawsuit.
State Farm Bureau assistant public affairs director John Johnson said Giles County is one of several Western Virginia counties that have balked at reimbursing farmers for stock lost to dogs.
Johnson said he has heard the Giles County Board of Supervisors intend to defend its action all the way to the state Supreme Court, if need be. "We'd love it," Johnson said, because the farm bureau wants to get local challenges to the law settled once and for all.
It was early one Thursday morning in late October when one of Umberger's neighbors alerted him that dogs were attacking the sheep he had pastured on a rented farm about two miles from his home.
He shot and killed two of the dogs, but not before they and a third dog that got away had killed eight of his 70 pregnant Suffolk-Rambouillet crossbred ewes.
"They caught them right behind the shoulder and just tore them all to pieces," Umberger said, describing the viciousness of the attack.
The ewes, which were not insured, were of a commercial grade. Umberger said he quoted a fair market price for them to investigating county officer Larry Martin. It was a "very, very reasonable" price, Umberger said, but he said he could have asked for more. "You maintain them for a year, getting ready to lamb and this happens," he said.
In a letter dated Dec. 5, county supervisors Chairman Bobby L. Compton told Umberger that his claim had been accepted by the supervisors. However, Compton wrote that the county had no money in its dog license fund and the county attorney had advised the board it was not required to add money to the fund to pay for livestock claims.
Umberger said that when he had taken his claim to the county supervisors the day before the letter was written, the board went into a closed session. The supervisors told him they used to pay farmers' claims, but were not going to pay anymore because the law had been abused, Umberger said.
He said the supervisors also told him that the state livestock law had been written for full-time farmers (which Umberger is not) and, because times have changed, they didn't feel the county was obligated to pay.
Umberger's lawyer, Robert Breimann of Grundy, however, said two attempts in recent years to change the livestock damage law have been deflected by the Virginia legislature. "The law's on the books and it's their responsibility to follow the law," Umberger said.
As for the supervisors' argument that there is no money in the dog fund to pay his claim, Umberger said he drew the board's attention to a 1990 appeal by a Bland County farmer. In that case, Circuit Court Judge Willis A. Woods said the county must pay a livestock claim from its general fund without regard to whether the money was available in the dog fund.
The Giles board's response, Umberger said, was that the Bland judge had been wrong.
Umberger said supervisors also told him he should never have allowed the dogs to get into his sheep. Umberger said he does all he can to keep dogs away from his sheep, including using electric fences.
He has since moved the sheep back to his main farm and bought a donkey to put with the sheep because donkeys will chase dogs.
Through his lawyer, Umberger has filed an appeal of the supervisors' decision with the Giles County Circuit Court. He also has asked the court to force the board to pay his claim, plus court costs.
The Farm Bureau's Johnson said the General Assembly passed the livestock law in 1950 as an incentive for counties to provide good dog control. The need for the law has not changed and it may be needed even more today as subdivisions full of dog owners encroach on farm land, he said.
The law has remained on the books, essentially unchanged since 1950 except for four years between 1977 and 1981 when language was added that required reimbursement only when money was available in a dog fund. That language was repealed in 1981, and the original requirement reinstated.
Johnson said he has spoken with several farmers whose county governments have told them they don't have enough money to pay claims. Farmers can't often afford to hire a lawyer to challenge their county government, he said. The problem is worst in Western and Southwestern Virginia where most of the livestock industry is, Johnson said.
Giles Administrator Kenneth Weaver said the supervisors had refused Umberger's claim "basically at the direction of legal counsel." County Attorney Richard Chidester, who Weaver said gave that advice, could not be reached for comment.
by CNB