Your lawyer would be the one to help you with that. Hopefully, the pilot's records have already been confiscated. Someone with an environmental law background would know about the health risks (short term and long term) of exposure to this very hazardous chemical.

I read your original posting and wondered how things were doing. I am not one for lawsuits. If you have real, lasting damages and losses, you deserve to be reimbursed. My personal opinion is in MOST cases, aggravation, mental anguish, etc., are all about Bravo $ierra and money. I do think the pilot should be held responsible. You can lodge a complaint with the FAA and the state agricultural department. He has to have a state and FAA license to handle the chemicals and apply them from aircraft. If there are additional complaints he can lose his licenses. See what you can do to place complaints withe the FA & ag dept. If you have permanent losses, you should be compensated for them. Shop around at several nurseries for plants of comparable size and present 3 estimates.

Yeah, we definitely don't want to go the lawsuit route. It's a pain in the neck, and we frankly have enough on our plates right now with health issues without doing that. Like I said, we just want to send him a message that there are people watching. Maybe he is new to the job and has to learn the hard way that he must do his job responsibly. By the way, according to the state guy, there really are no regulations on these guys in Alabama regarding distance from homes they can spray (just schools and churches) which we think is bizarre.

The thing that really bugs me is that our neighbors appear to have lost a couple of trees to this spray. And they didn't dare use their vegetables.....we had no idea what was sprayed. The spray was applied to peanuts, yet all their veges were above ground crops so didn't know if it could make a difference. Both of them have health problems, the wife is in danger of losing her eye sight. What a travesty if this turned out to be the last year she could enjoy the sight of flowers but had none because of an irresponsible person!

But you are right and I hadn't been thinking of lodging a complaint with the FAA. Even if it goes nowhere, maybe it would get something on record. The state ag department is already working toward a fine for the guy. We are blessed that the spray should have no health effects. What bugs me is that it COULD have been something harmful like that and there are little kids living in the houses on either side of us. And what if....

Don't know if you saw the post....the ag guy said if you know that your plants have been hit with herbicide the best thing to do is immediately wash them down. If it has been even an hour or two, don't bother, the damage has been done. Under no circumstances should you fertilize for, I think he said, 3 weeks or more. The first things to go were large tender leaved plants (the angel trumpet and black and blue salvia, followed by Confederate Rose). Those plants that had thicker leaves were the last to show affects.

I thought it was illegal to use paraquat now.

According to the manufacturers website, it is inactive in the soil, doesn't travel through the soil or contaminate ground water or harm wildlife. It is very commonly used in our country. The EU on the other hand has forbidden it's use since July 10, 2007. Makes you wonder doesn't it? What it DID do on plants in our neighborhood was leave spots all over the foliage and blooms of virtually everything in the yard....along with killing several limbs of a couple of our neighbors' trees. (The weeds, of course, were the first to begin dying....they were also the first to begin recovering.) I also noticed that, once the blooms did return..and it took a couple months... the stems of the zinnas were oddly brittle.