The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 162, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 9, 1985 Page: 3 of 32
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: The Baytown Sun and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Sterling Municipal Library.
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THE BAYTOWN SUN
Thursday, May 9, 1985
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Lawyer aids farmers with cash woes
KESHA CASTLEBERRY and Larry Carter ootn placed at tfes wsrae
leYel in the Evening Optimist Club's oratorical contest. The two
eighth-graders, both students at Gentry Junior School, will compete
in the district contest on May 18 in Houston.
40 Texas women join
birth control suit
Pfo-
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DALLAS <AP) — About 40
Texas women have joined the
growing ranks of women across
the country who have filed
lawsuits against the maker of
the controversial Daikon Shield
birth control device.
Texas court records show me
lawsuits against A.H. *f^jbins
Co, have been filed in the last
few months,, the Dallas Times
Herald reported Sunday. The
newspaper also said defense
lawyers predict that another 150
suits may be filed by the end of
the summer.
‘Texas is ripe for the pick-
)rod, WBgl
, clients through newspaper
advertisement and a toll-free
telephone number.
Nationwide, nearly 900 new
Daikon Shield cases were filed in
> the first three months of 1985.-
The wave of Daikon Shield
litigation is hitting Texas years
after women in California,
Maryland, Minnesota, Maryland
and New York began hauling
Robbins into court.
Through last, July, the last
date for which a state-by-state
breakdown is available, Texas
represented only about 2 percent
of the Daikon Shield suits.
The number of women in the
U.S. who have sued Robbiqs now
stdnds at about 12,000. Most of
them sav the Daikon Shield was
a flawed, inadequately tested
device that left them unable to
bear children.
Weishrod said he has filed
about a dozen Daikon Shield
suits this year. He said
associates in Minneapolis expect”
to file another 130 to 140 suits
after they finish screening the-"
nearly 300 women who have
made inquiries sinceJanuary.
In late December, San Antonio
lawyer Thomas Rhodes filed 11
Houston. Dallas'attorney Frank
Andrews is filing two and has six
more in the works.
The deaths of more than 15
women havetbeen blamed on the
tiny intrauterine device, the
Times Herald said.
Last month, Robbins, based in
Richmond, Va., set up a $615
million fund to pay for the
lawsuits. The company also
denies that the Daikon Shield
caused infections or was defec-
tiye. «"
The. upswing in litigation
comes as the state’s first Daikon
Shield case is scheduled to begin
*"r'JMLav J3-i
_______
..... MeFfilTsaB
SWAINSBORO, Ga. (AP) - If
the warmth of the Deep South
didn’t.lure Brent Merrill from
his childhood home in New York
City, the prospect of an educa-
tion at Emory University and
dreams of law school did.
Years later, with two diplomas
and a brjef Navy career behind
him, it was the smell of tilled
earth and the appeal of family
life in a country town that
dissolved all his plans to return
North.
“I once intended to go back to
New York to practice law,” the
42-year-old Swainsboro resident
said, ‘‘but over the years I got so
entrenched here. There really
wasn’t any reason to leave.”
In addition to his marriage to a
south Georgia woman, ft was a
growing fascination with the
plight of farmers m the region
which kept Merrill and his law
practice in Emanuel County’s
seat of 9,000.
Today, he puts in many hours
in his pTusTT office on Main"
Street. But another side of Mer-
rill exists six miles from town,
beyond a dilapidated gate and
down a rutted dirt road winding
off through a forest. There a 65-
acre farming experiment illus-
trates Merrill’s attention to his
profession.
“What I do, generally, is rep-
resent farmers in trouble,” he
said. In recent years, he said,
droughts, financial com-,
plications and other factors havfi>
spawned an “extraordinarily
common” predicament: farm
families finding themselves ,on
the verge of, bankruptcy and
foreclosure.
“When I first started repre-
•aiized I
,as a- teen-ager, arrived in
Swainsboro in 1971 from an as-
sistant attorney general's posit
tion in Atlanta. After five years-
with a local law firm, he started
his own practice in 1976.
“And by 1980 I was heavily in-
volved with financially troubled
farmers,” he said, putting about
25 percent of his clients in that
category. “But I needed to know
vVijat it was all about.”
He read books and enlisted the
assistance of friends for his
agricultural ventures, hoping to
make a profit at an occupation
that leaves so many of his clients
destitute.
With the help of friends, he
built a small barn on the farm
WWI*
former Navy man said, “then I
could drive a tractor.”
Besides sporadic farming on
his land, he embarks on occa-
sional joint ventures with other
farmers. This year’s project is a
large field of Vidalia onions leas-
ed from a Metter farmer. “He
had the technical know-how and
the land,” Merrill said, “andf
had the money.”
With a full-time legal practice,
his farming enterprises, his
family and his part-timfe duties
as commander of the Navy’s
Augusta-based Weapons Station
Unit, he has little time for hob-
bies.
“I don’t hunt or fish,” he said,
staring at several sets of deer
tracks near the barn. “But I do
plan to build a cabin out here
someday: Someplace-to just get
away and be with the kids.”
But for now, much of Merrill’s
time is taken up by farm
families and'their ongoing bouts
with bad weather, creditors and
the courts. During the past
decade, the problems of farrpers
and their huge investments
every year have grown pro-
gressively worse.
1||
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You don’t hove to
leove Baytown for
GOOD COUNTRY MUSIC
it'» right here every Friday
—-------8f.ai.-H |>;m.
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* Kay Swenson, 40, bf Austin, is
seeking $17 million in damages.
She claims the Daikon Shield
caused an infection that forced
her to undergo a hysterectomy
!in 1979. Robbins is denying any
liability;---
According to the - Times
Herald, lawyers attribute the
rise in Daikon Shield litigation to
adverse publicity about the
device and to Robbins. The com-
pany' launched a $4 million
advertising campaign last fall
urging women to have the device
removed at the company’s ex-
pense.
Robbins sold the Daikon Shield
in the U.S. from 197J, to mid-1974.
T ‘wanted to un-
derstand,- and I always thought
the best way to do that was to try
it yourself.”.
So he purchased the small
farm, 65 acres of fields and for-
est, and set out to learn the ways
and problems of the people he
repYesents in court.
“It was really more of a crack
at farm management,” he said,
gesturing across a fallow field
where soybeans, peanuts, corn
and cattle herds have stood in re-
cent years. “Since I had my law
practice, I never had to support.
myself with the farming,” he
said.
Merrill, who came to Georgia
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Brown, Leon. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 162, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 9, 1985, newspaper, May 9, 1985; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1074684/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.