Paradise Poisoned, Couple’s Suit Claims

Career schoolteachers John and Marie Yewusiak began their pursuit of an idyllic country life style in 1968, buying a five-acre parcel of land in rural Bonsall and building, with their own hands, an adobe home for themselves and their newborn son.

They planted fruit trees and a large vegetable garden. They had chickens, bees, goats and cows that provided them with eggs, honey, cheese, yogurt and milk. John Yewusiak butchered his own beef.

This was organic living at its best. Chemicals were not part of their vocabulary. If there were mites in a tree, John Yewusiak would hose them off with water.

“The greatest pleasure in life,” he would say, “is to sit on the hay pile and enjoy a fresh orange or apple or pomegranate with my boy.”

So it was an ironically cruel turn of events that September morning in 1977 when a helicopter came swooping over their house, dousing Marie Yewusiak with some of its load of pesticides intended for the lime grove on a neighbor’s property just 20 feet from their home.

Filed Another Lawsuit

The chemical bath knocked Marie Yewusiak to the ground and sickened her for the next two years. She complained of nausea, breathing problems, dizziness and other maladies. The couple sued the property owners and the company spraying the lime grove and, two years later, agreed on an out-of-court settlement of $30,000 for damages.

But life has gotten still worse, the Yewusiaks claim. They filed another lawsuit in 1980, saying the pesticides applied by grove workers on the ground continued to drift onto their property--despite a court order intended to ban such oversprays and to give the Yewusiaks 48 hours’ notice of spraying so they could leave their home for a day or two if they wanted. Marie Yewusiak’s condition worsened. Once, she was hospitalized in intensive care for chemically induced pneumonia.

So when the couple hears about other allegations of pesticide poisoning in North County--claims by neighbors of a tomato field in Carmel Valley in the early-through-mid 1980s, and neighbors of a strawberry field in Vista just this month--the Yewusiaks say they can empathize only too well.

The second lawsuit alleges continuing nuisance, trespassing and negligence caused by recurring incidents of pesticide applications that have drifted onto their property. The suit does not seek specific monetary damages, but in 1985 the Yewusiaks offered to settle the case for nearly $1.3 million, court documents show.

Because of the backlog of civil lawsuits in North County, the Yewusiaks’ lawsuit won’t go before a judge in a Vista Superior Court until July at the earliest--eight years after the suit was initiated. State law mandates that civil lawsuits be heard within five years of being filed, but earlier in the history of the lawsuit, both sides waived the five-year time limit for reasons that the current Yewusiak attorney does not know.

The suit was earlier scheduled to go to trial last July, but was delayed a full 12 months because there were no available courtrooms to assign the litigation.

In the eight years since the lawsuit was filed, the Yewusiaks claim they have been emotionally, medically and financially broken.

Legal and Medical Costs

They say they have spent upwards of $30,000--more likely, $50,000--in legal and medical costs. They have encumbered their home--which they originally paid for in cash--with two separate mortgages totaling $125,000. They have sold a small side business in Vista--a health food store--and the couple’s retirement property in Hemet. Compounding their financial woes, Marie was forced to quit her teaching job in the Oceanside Unified School District, where John still works as a fifth grade teacher at Mission Elementary School.

And they contend their entire life style has been turned helter-skelter.

Marie Yewusiak says she cannot work outside in the very yard she loves because she is light-sensitive, cannot stand upright for any length of time, and tires quickly.

They have three air filters in their bedroom, and others in the house. They have purchased automobiles with only the best air conditioners, because she is allergic to virtually any airborne chemical.

Marie Yewusiak is so depressed by the entire matter--a depression brought on both as a side effect of the pesticide poisoning and by the emotional burden of dealing with the problem--that she has lost her gumption for life itself.

“It used to be, I could teach, work with the animals, tend to the garden and still do my Jazzercise,” she said. “Now, I’m tired just by talking.

“If we had known the kinds of problems we were going to have living here, we never would have moved here. But this is America, and who would have thought you couldn’t be safe in your own home?”

The defendants in the lawsuit include Ronald Gibson and Joseph Fergus, who together own the property on Dentro De Lomas Road, on a hillside just south of the San Luis Rey River. Earlier, there were two other defendants--another property owner, who has since died of cancer, and the grove manager, who was dropped from the lawsuit because of a procedural error.

Defending Gibson and Fergus is the law firm of Higgs, Fletcher & Mack. The attorney assigned to the case, Dennis Hickman, declined comment because of the pending litigation.

Mel Fortes, a Napa lawyer retained by the Yewusiaks, said the defense position has been that Marie Yewusiak’s medical condition cannot be linked to the use of the pesticides.

“But we have expert witnesses who will testify that they are,” Fortes said.

Further, the defense has lined up doctors “who seem to believe that if she has suffered from these ills, they shouldn’t have lingered on for this long,” Fortes said. “But on the other hand, the defense’s own expert witnesses have admitted that Marie is so paranoid about the application of chemicals, even a person applying water on the lime grove could trigger her medical reaction because her fear is so great.”

Fortes said chemical tests taken on the Yewusiak property show the presence of the pesticide Chlordane, typically used to kill termites but also used to kill ants in groves until its use for agricultural applications was banned in 1978.

“The state of California defines Chlordane as being toxic if found at levels of three parts per million,” he said, “yet we found it in 7,000 parts per million on the Yewusiaks’ property.”

Additionally, Fortes said, depositions of the defendants indicate that the weed killer Round-Up was applied in the grove annually from 1981 through 1985, even though the Yewusiaks were only notified three times during that period that pesticides were to be applied on the grove.

No Charges Filed

“And we have every reason to believe Round-Up is still being used because the grove is weed-free and they don’t control their weeds by hand,” Fortes said.

County Department of Agriculture officials say the Yewusiaks complained to them about the pesticide allegations, and that an investigation was made. No charges against the landowners were filed, however, said Bill Snodgrass, assistant agricultural commissioner.

Fortes said he was not sure whether the private tests taken on the Yewusiak property had been turned over to county agriculture officials for their information.

But Marie Yewusiak said she is cynical about what help the Department of Agriculture could be to her, and instead is counting on the civil lawsuit to bring the matter to a head.