WHEN THE time comes to

write the history of

Oklahoma’s litigation against poultry companies in Arkansas, it’ll be a story only a lawyer would love. The run-up to the federal trial—which is still at least a year in the future—has dragged on nigh unto forever. At least in human years. Ol’ Charlie Dickens hadn’t seen anything when he devoted a whole Victorian-sized novel to the endless case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. This current epic was already as old as the Oklahoma hills by the time that state’s attorney general and showboat-in-chief, Drew Edmondson, sued several Arkansas poultry companies back in 2005. The latest twist in this ongoing saga: The Hon. Gregory Frizzell has ruled that Arkansas cannot intervene in Oklahoma’s lawsuit, not that many of us thought he would let us. State governments in these matters are usually relegated to the status of Innocent Bystander, that is, Friends of the Court. And you know what happens to innocent bystanders: nothing good.

(Legal note: The attorney general of Arkansas, Dustin McDaniel, was on hand to hear the judge tell Official Arkansas to buzz off, although the request for intervention was originally filed by this state’s former attorney general, Mike Beebe, who, we’ve heard, has been promoted. )

Folks over in the Sooner State want the Illinois River cleaned up. And who can blame them ? Who wants a polluted river ? The Illinois flows out of Arkansas and into Oklahoma, and the lawsuit alleges that poultry litter, which is spread on Arkansas land to fertilize Arkansas crops, pollutes their part of the river. Which figures. You spread a lot of chicken you-know-what on good land, have a good rain come along and wash it off into the streams and rivers, and the next thing you know, Oklahoma is spittin’ mad and filing lawsuits. Drew Edmondson has been, well, a tad relentless in this matter. Which is how to win friends and influence voters. He easily withstood a challenge last election from one opponent who promised to drop the lawsuit if he

won. Unfortunately for that candidate, he was running in Oklahoma, not Arkansas, and, of course, he lost. Moderation seldom pleases the crowd, certainly not in a good ol’ populist state like Oklahoma. We know. We live in one, too.

We recall a fruitless attempt by former Senator Tim Hutchinson to get the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene in this inter-state dispute.

Tim Hutchinson has long since been replaced.

But the lawsuit remains.

Now it appears the case will go forward without Arkansas officialdom having a direct role in it. Judge Frizzell did say this state might be able to intervene later. But not now.

So the case will have to go on without Arkansas.

Okay. Nobody wants pollution. And that includes Arkansas’ farmers, who just want a reasonable compromise. But now it’s become a legal dispute, which tends to leave all reason out of it. This case has always cried out for negotiation, but such a course is much too sensible to appeal to the kind of lawhead / politician who sues first and negotiates later, if ever. Namely, Drew Edmondson.