Fighting over chicken poop

The controversy we've been talking about in class has finally blown up: some students at a law clinic at the U of M have deployed a serious weapon in the form of a lawsuit against a large Eastern Shore farm. The farm, defended as a "family farm" that's been in business for "over 100 years" is home to 80,000 chickens and I'll wager it produces a prodigious amount of poop. The response by Perdue, the voice of the industry that produces about 600 million chickens annually in Maryland alone, is two fold. First, they are defending the farm as a poor, defenseless entity that the law students at the clinic are unjustifiably attacking. Second, they are calling their legislators and asking them to pull the plug on the law clinic, which is vulnerable as part of the USM (University System of Maryland). While the one "poor" farm may not have huge resources, they clearly already have the deep pockets of the industry on their side, though the farmer says, "Perdue is not paying our legal costs." There's no way they will get zero help from the industry, who is already mustering help in the legislature, though I'm sure they will help in such a way that this kind of claim can be made. Idealistic law students tilting at a huge industry to defend the bay: sounds like a Hollywood script!