The lawsuit is aiming for class certification with Robert Fields and Lorena Ortiz, two Denver residents who live within a mile of the facility at 4555 York Street, as the representatives who filed it on May 28. The complaint names Nestle Purina Petcare as the defendant, claiming that poor maintenance on Purina’s behalf has led to the horrifying smells.
“A properly designed, operated, and maintained pet food manufacturing facility will adequately capture, remove, and dispose excess noxious emissions and will not emit noxious odors into the ambient air as fugitive emissions,” the lawsuit contends. “Defendant negligently and knowingly failed to properly design, operate, repair, and/or maintain the facility and its associated operations, thereby causing the invasion of Plaintiffs' property by noxious odors on unusually frequent, intermittent and ongoing reoccurring occasions.”
The complaint asks for compensation for those damages. It includes quotes from many who live near the Purina factory describing its negative impact.
“It’s like someone barfed in your backyard and then it baked in the sun and then you put a fan on the smell to keep it circulating,” prospective class members Robert Boughner and Kelly MacNeil allegedly said.
The complaint estimates that the class could be as large as 2,000 people and specifies those eligible as anyone who lives within a mile of the pet food facility.
History of the Purina Pet Food Plant
Purina has operated in its Denver location since 1930, but back then the plant was primarily used to produce feed for livestock. According to a Nestle website, the plant transitioned to making only pet food in 1972. Purina's website boasts that the Denver facility is the first pet food factory to use solar panels, and it gets over 80 percent of the energy it uses from renewable sources. The pet food giant has over 350 employees at the Denver plant, which sits near the Elyria-Swansea and Globeville neighborhoods. That area has long been identified as one of the most polluted in the country, and Purina reportedly led the City of Denver’s list of smell complaints in 2023.
Purina sits on one side of Interstate 70, which was controversially expanded into the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods in a project that was completed in 2022. The Colorado Department of Transportation purchased and demolished 56 homes over the course of the project, while the Purina facility sat undisturbed.
Purina has publicized improvements to the odor control system, such as installing additional air filtration systems called cyclonic separators, but the lawsuit says those measures have not decreased the stench as much as Purina suggests.
“Despite Defendant’s representations, the odors caused by the facility have been and continue to be dispersed across all public and private land in the class area,” the complaint counters.
The plaintiffs are represented by Liddle Sheets Coulson, a Detroit-based class action firm, and Fuicelli & Lee, a Denver personal injury firm. Keith Fuicelli, an attorney on the case, says he can’t discuss how the lawsuit came to be, but notes in an email that “you can bring claims for noxious odors especially if they negatively impact your property values and/or health.”
And that’s exactly what has happened with Purina, the lawsuit argues.
“Plaintiffs and members of the putative class suffer serious discomfort because of Defendant's noxious odors that interfere with their use and enjoyment of property,” it says. “The foul odors emitted from the facility are offensive.”
The lawsuit further alleges that Purina hasn’t taken required steps to capture and eliminate odors, adding that the company's systems are inadequate for a pet food cooking process.
According to the lawsuit, multiple complaints about the property have been made with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in recent years, including one that said, “Purina is releasing something so toxic that it’s making our eyes water over a mile away.”
Recent Purina Odor Violations
If smelly air has been diluted with seven or more volumes of odor-free air and a smell is still detected, that counts as a violation under Colorado rules. The CDPHE sent employees to investigate Purina in November 2021, according to the department, and those employees noted two exceedances of the state thresholds for odors.In 2021, the City of Denver issued the facility a $12,000 fine for repeated emissions of noxious odors.
Purina and the CDPHE eventually reached an agreement in June 2022 that stipulated Purina would comply with a city-approved Odor Control Plan, required for any pet food facility in Denver. However, the CDPHE is currently investigating potential air quality violations at Purina, according to the department.
In March of this year, the CDPHE issued a compliance advisory to the facility regarding alleged odor noncompliance in October 2023. That month, a CDPHE investigator found Purina's odors exceeded limits by as much as twice the legal amount.
State enforcement action against Purina is ongoing, and the CDPHE could require the company to address odors in Denver if health officials find violations that merit action. While results of the state investigation are pending, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are pushing for Purina to repay them for what they say has ruined their quality of life.
in the suit, lead plaintiffs Fields and Ortiz both say they don’t want to go outside; Fields adds that he can’t even open his windows when the weather is hot. Other potential members of the class says the smell can take hours to get out of their homes, and that they have experienced nausea and headaches from its effects.
According to Purina, the company is committed to being a good neighbor; it declines to comment on the specifics of the complaint.
Its neighbors, on the other hand, are ready to act in a more public fashion: The lawsuit notes that over fifty households within the one-mile boundary of the suggested class have already reached out to attorneys about being included in the case.
