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Massachusetts Insurer Wins Appeal in $4.7M Arkansas Chicken House CaseLock Icon

2 min read

A Massachusetts insurance company recently won its case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit involving a lawsuit tied to the cave-in of several chicken houses in southeast Arkansas that caused more than $4.7 million in damage.

The case stemmed from a winter storm in February 2021 that dropped at least two rounds of snow over several days, causing significant property damage including the collapse of chicken house roofs, according to the seven-page appellate court decision.

Norfolk & Dedham Mutual Fire Insurance Co. of Dedham, Massachusetts, paid the claims to 10 chicken farmers, who had coverage for catastrophic roof collapses.

The insurance company then sued the manufacturer of the wooden roof trusses of the poultry houses, Rogers Manufacturing Corp. of West Monroe, Louisiana.

In the May 2023 lawsuit filed in Little Rock federal court, Norfolk alleged the roofs were required to have been able to support a total load of 23 pounds per square foot but didn’t.

Rogers asked that the case be dismissed because Norfolk’s claims were barred by Arkansas’ statute of repose, which protects people and companies in the construction industry from being sued over work done years before the lawsuit, according to the 8th Circuit’s order.

U.S. District Court Judge Billy Roy Wilson agreed with Rogers and dismissed the case in August 2023.

Norfolk didn’t allege that Rogers took any part in the installation of the roof trusses, the order said.

Norfolk appealed Wilson’s decision, and the three-judge panel at the 8th Circuit ruled to reverse Wilson’s dismissal and send the case back to federal court in Little Rock for further proceedings.

“Though we find that Norfolk’s complaint survives Rogers’s motion to dismiss, we emphasize that our opinion does not foreclose a finding at a later stage of litigation that the roof trusses Rogers provided were not standardized goods and therefore that the Arkansas statute of repose applies,” 8th Circuit Court Judge Raymond W. Gruender wrote in the order. “Nor does our opinion address the merits of Norfolk’s underlying claims.”

Rogers said in its answer filed last month that it “affirmatively asserts that any roof trusses it may have designed, manufactured and supplied to the Insureds were not defective when they left Defendant’s control.”

Rogers is represented by Quattlebaum Grooms & Tull of Little Rock. Norfolk is represented by WDTC Law of Little Rock and the Cozen O’Connor law firm in Dallas.

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