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A judge closed it. Now, the Texas Supreme Court has been asked to decide if it should reopen in a case with statewide ramifications for landowners and homeowners.
Mersini Blanchard says the first clue a fowl neighbor had moved in was the foul smell.
She thought at first there was a dead animal nearby.
Blanchard and her neighbors would soon realize the smell was coming from a newly built chicken farm, just over a mile from her Malakoff home in Henderson County, about 70 miles southeast of Dallas.
“Sometimes it’s so bad … you cannot come outside to enjoy your property anymore,” Blanchard said.
Appraisal district and court records show the value of the family’s home and 1,200 acres of surrounding property plunged 75 percent after the chicken farm - and the smell - moved in.
“I was going to be stuck with a piece of property here that would basically be worthless,” said Mersini’s son, Frank Blanchard, a Dallas custom home builder.
Frustrated, the Blanchards and their neighbors banded together to file a nuisance lawsuit. They asked that the chicken farm operation be shut down.
In 2019, a jury sided with them, finding the farm was a nuisance to the neighbors. Henderson County District Judge Scott McKee ordered that the chicken farm operation be closed.
“Defendants deny a nuisance exists and have either taken no or insufficient measures to reduce the odor pollution...,” Judge McKee wrote.
Almost two years after the farm operation was shuttered, neighbors worry the smells could return. Sanderson Farms, which supplies chickens to the farm, has appealed the case.
Now before the Texas Supreme Court, any ruling will have potential ramifications for homeowners’ and landowners’ rights across the state.
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