Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 22, 1991 TAG: 9103220386
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, the state's largest farm organization, has thrown its support behind the lawsuit. The federation hopes to bring a stop to local governments' trying to get around a state law that requires counties to compensate farmers for livestock losses.
Steve Umberger, a Virginia Tech sheep specialist who farms near Newport, has filed 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.
John Johnson, state Farm Bureau assistant public affairs director, 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 that the Giles County Board of Supervisors intends to defend its action 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.
Early one Thursday in late October, 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 had killed eight of his 70 pregnant Suffolk-Rambouillet crossbred ewes.
The ewes, which were not insured, were of a commercial grade. Umberger said he quoted a fair market price for the ewes to the investigating county officer, Larry Martin. It was a "very, very reasonable" price, Umberger said.
In a letter dated Dec. 5, county Supervisors Chairman Bobby L. Compton told Umberger that the county had no money in its dog license fund, and that 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 that 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 attorney, Robert Breimann of Grundy, disagreed. He 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 Judge Willis 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 the supervisors also told him he should never have allowed the dogs to get to 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.
Johnson of the Farm Bureau said the General Assembly passed the livestock law in 1950 as an incentive for counties to provide good dog control. The need has not changed and the law may be needed even more today as subdivisions full of dog owners encroach on farmland, he said.
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 an attorney to challenge their county government, he said. The problem is worst in Western Virginia, where most of the livestock industry is, Johnson said.
by CNB