Two years into suing the State of Montana over food safety gaps, Jeffrey P. Havens has learned that state District Court Judge Christopher D. Abbott has dismissed his case “with prejudice for lack of justiciability.”
A licensed sanitarian, Havens for a decade, was charged with enforcing commercial food safety for the Montana Department of Pubic Health and Human Services. He sued the state over the Montana Local Food Choice Act and related statutes, which advanced “Food Freedom” but put residents at risk.
But after two years with the Havens lawsuit being active in Montana’s First Judicial District, Judge Abbott decided to end it by ruling that Havens “lacks standing.” And by making his ruling “with prejudice,” the judge prevents Havens from refilling the complaints in the future.
“Plaintiff Jeffery Havens’s filings are very long, and because of his lack of legal training, they tend to veer into matters with limited legal relevance,” Abbott wrote. “His filings also often discuss political matters not appropriately addressed in a judicial forum.”
In concluding he lacked standing, Abbott said Havens “does not allege to have been personally harmed by the production, sale, or consumption of unregulated homemade foods.”
While Havens did not have a lawyer, the defendant State of Montana assigned at least five assistant attorneys to the case: Michael D. Russell, Thane Johnson, Alwyn Lansing, Michael Noonan, and George Carlo L. Clark.
In dismissing the lawsuit, Abbott said standing requires more than one’s personal opposition to a policy or another’s act or omissions.
“So it is here,” his ruling continues. “Havens’s objection is predicated on the Act’s relaxation of restrictions on homemade foods and, specifically, on its impact on consumers. But Havens, by his own admissions, is neither a producer, seller, nor consumer of these foods. His concern about the impact of the Act on others is not a personal stake in the outcome.”
And because Havens was found without standing, Abbott said the Court lacks jurisdiction to proceed to the merits.
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