The State - News from May 29, 1989

A federal agency set up to to oversee and administer federal marketing orders for peaches, plums and nectarines was ordered to reimburse two San Joaquin Valley growers for fruit they were forced to dump because of overly stringent standards and for the assessments they paid during the past eight years. Dorthea Baker, an administrative law judge for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ruled that members of the California Tree Fruit Agreement’s plum and nectarine committees acted in a “capricious and arbitrary manner” by giving variances from maturity and color standards to themselves while denying them to growers Frank Elliott and John Kashiki. An attorney for the pair said damages could total $8 million.