Mona Lisa Wallace

The distance between a house and a sprayfield

At Kinlaw Farms in Bladen County, the dimensions of a nuisance could be stated in distances and intervals. Ten families lived within roughly half a mile of an operation that annually housed nearly 15,000 hogs. Open lagoons held millions of gallons of waste. In summer, spraying occurred as often as three to five days a week, for about six hours at a time. Trucks used an entrance road near the homes at all hours. Those measurements became part of the record in McKiver v. Murphy-Brown, a case about what neighboring families could still do on their own land.

Mona Lisa Wallace is the founding partner of Wallace & Graham in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her practice includes environmental nuisance, toxic exposure, occupational disease, mass torts, consumer claims, and employee-benefit litigation. Her broader docket includes asbestos, industrial chemicals, coal ash, lending practices, retirement benefits, and dangerous products. Across those matters, exposure reaches people where they work or live.

Beginning in 2013, Wallace and a larger plaintiffs’ team represented about 500 eastern North Carolina residents in private-nuisance actions arising from industrial hog operations. Five cases went to juries during 2018 and 2019. Each trial concerned a different group of neighbors and a different farm. McKiver became the published appellate decision, preserving the proof from one Bladen County community, the defendant’s arguments, and the legal boundaries that remained after trial.

Private nuisance gave the families a legal vocabulary for ordinary uses of home. They described keeping windows closed, abandoning porches and gardens, avoiding outdoor meals, and changing when relatives could visit. The claim did not depend on whether raising hogs was lawful in the abstract. Under North Carolina law, jurors had to decide whether the facility’s location, maintenance, or operation substantially and unreasonably interfered with the neighbors’ use and enjoyment of their property.

The litigation joined residents’ testimony with farm operations and corporate records. Each account of a missed cookout, a closed window, or insects around a home had to connect with evidence from the farm and the company that supplied the animals, imposed procedures, and controlled the waste system. Because private nuisance requires substantial interference with each plaintiff’s property, the larger operating model could not replace proof of what happened at each home.

Building the Kinlaw Record

The Kinlaw Farms record combined residents’ testimony with evidence concerning animal counts, waste lagoons, spray schedules, ventilation fans, road placement, truck traffic, and the producer’s control over operating practices.

Wallace & Graham represented the neighbors with a larger plaintiffs’ team. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit preserved the liability finding and compensatory damages, holding that the record supported a continuing private nuisance and the plaintiffs’ loss of use and enjoyment of their homes.

The Verdict and Appellate Result

The McKiver jury awarded $750,000 in compensatory damages to ten neighboring families. The Fourth Circuit affirmed liability and the compensatory awards.

The broader filed nuisance cases were later resolved through a confidential settlement. The litigation preserved a public record connecting the operation’s physical layout and waste-management practices to the families’ use and enjoyment of their homes.

When testimony cannot wait

Wallace now serves as co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the federal Camp Lejeune Water Litigation in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Court orders identify J. Edward Bell III as lead counsel and Elizabeth Cabraser, Robin Greenwald, Wallace, Zina Bash, W. Michael Dowling, and James Roberts III as co-leads, with Bash also serving as government liaison counsel. The docket concerns claims under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act arising from exposure to contaminated water at the Marine base.

One early order shows the practical problem beneath the scale of that litigation. Case Management Order No. 4 governs depositions used to preserve testimony. A Rule 27 petition must include a good-faith declaration and a healthcare provider’s letter indicating that, because of the witness’s prognosis, the person is likely to become unable to testify within six months. The order sets procedures for notice, examination, disputes, and use of the recorded testimony.

The preservation protocol addresses the risk that illness will prevent a claimant from testifying while service records, medical proof, causation evidence, and trial plans are still being assembled. Leadership counsel must coordinate with the United States, individual lawyers, healthcare providers, and the court so a claimant’s account remains available if the person’s health no longer permits live testimony. The order also keeps disputes from stopping a deposition when a judge is unavailable: examination continues with rights reserved for a later ruling. That procedure preserves evidence without deciding admissibility in advance.

The Department of Justice reported on July 17, 2026, that Camp Lejeune settlement offers across the claims system exceeded $968 million and payouts exceeded $801 million. Those totals cover the government’s broader administrative and litigation program; they are not recoveries attributable to Wallace. The government also states that recovery outside the Elective Option is not guaranteed, causation must be proved under the statutory standard, and related disability payments or benefits may create offsets.

McKiver reconstructed repeated conditions around homes after years of farm operation. Camp Lejeune leadership must preserve testimony before illness removes the opportunity to obtain it. In both dockets, maps and measurements establish scale, while individual accounts describe exposure and its consequences.