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Show Farmer's Union Gets $25,000 Damages In Suit A twelve-man federal jury in the Utah Federal District court has cleared the National Farmers Farm-ers Union of the charge that it was "communist-dominated." In an unanimous verdict arrived at in less than five hours of deliberation, de-liberation, the jury declared the Utah State Farm Bureau Federation, Fed-eration, A. V. Smoot, its vice president, and Frank G. Shelly, executive secretary, guilty of libel and ordered them to pay the Farmers Union $25,000 damages. dam-ages. The Farm Bureau brought to Salt Lake City for its defense such star House of Representatives Representa-tives Un-American Activities committee ex-Communist witnesses wit-nesses as Paul Crouch of Miami, Manning Johnson of New York, Maurice Nalkin of Brooklyn and Howard Rushmore of the Hearst newspapers. In four days of testimony, the Farm Bureau witnesses wit-nesses identified only five t among the 300,000 voting members mem-bers of the Farmers Union as Communists .in 29 states of the Union, all of them before 1941, and not one Communist member in the Utah-Idaho membership. Farmers Union witnesses were on the stand but a half day. During this short period, the Farmers Union proved that the Farm Bureau had printed the defamatory words; that they appeared ap-peared in several Utah newspapers; news-papers; that the Farmers Union had been damaged in its business busi-ness and membership operations. The Farmers Union offense paid little attention to the considerable con-siderable monetary damage claimed. It concentrated on proving prov-ing how the organization is controlled con-trolled and dominated by its thousands of members, who had not been infiltrated, , even though the Communists may have made a concerted effort. The suit grew out of a political polit-ical memorandum sent our during dur-ing the 1950 campaign by the Utah Farm Bureau Federation in an attempt to defeat Representative Represen-tative Walter K. Granger, in ' which it referred to the Farmers Farm-ers Union as "communist-dominated." The statement was published pub-lished in several Utah papers. The Farmers Union sought a re- traction, but the Farm Bureau refused. The Farmers Union then filed a $250,000 libel suit. |