The Farmer's Lawyer

July 12, 2021
A lawyer recalls her battle to prevent the Reagan administration from running indebted farmers off their land in this feisty debut. Vogel, a former North Dakota agriculture commissioner, was lead counsel in Coleman v. Block, an early 1980s class-action lawsuit against the Farmers Home Administration, a federal agency that made loans to farmers. Prodded by the Reagan administration’s ideological opposition to handouts to farmers, the agency cracked down on borrowers who fell behind on loan payments, and pressured them to sell their farms to repay loans (and foreclosed if they refused); cut off credit for basics like livestock feed; seized farmers’ income and froze their bank accounts; and violated laws in denying loan-payment deferrals. Vogel sets this appalling story of a politicized bureaucracy run amok against a rich portrait of North Dakota farm life and its political tradition of rural solidarity. (She encountered a darker side of that when right-wing militias fomented violence against foreclosures.) Her travails as a single mom, falling hopelessly behind on her own bills, add a vivid subplot. The result is an engrossing legal saga and a rousing tribute to prairie populism. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.

August 13, 2021

In this engaging work, lawyer Vogel recounts her battle against Farmers Home Administration (FHA) that began with representing a group of local plaintiffs and morphed into a national class action lawsuit involving the ACLU. Vogel had occupied several prestigious positions after law school when she decided to move back to North Dakota in the early 1980s. There she stumbled across unfair practices by the FHA, the U.S. agriculture agency that extended credit and gave loans and grants to individual farmers and low-income rural American. She learned that the FHA was freezing personal accounts of farmers when their loans lapsed, without offering the deferral they were legally entitled to. Hundreds of farmers began calling Vogel at all hours of the day, hoping for legal assistance. Vogel eventually filed a class-action suit on behalf of 240,000 farmers, Coleman v. Block, whose result was preventing tens of thousands of farm foreclosures. Vogel's memoir approaches the case with a sense of history, giving in-depth insight on what happened within the farming community and the procedures and institutions put in place to prevent it from happening again. She recounts the personal stories of her plaintiffs with heart and discusses her own involvement as a non-trial lawyer with self-deprecating humor while also showing her intense dedication to her clients. VERDICT An enjoyable true-life legal drama on par with Erin Brockovich. Vogel uses only the occasional legalese, and her story will appeal to readers who enjoy a good underdog legal story.--Stacy Shaw, Denver

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2021
The 1980s were a devastating time for farmers in the U.S. A combination of high interest rates, land speculation, and a grain embargo against the Soviet Union resulted in staggering losses. This David and Goliath story tells about nine farmers who launched a class-action lawsuit in North Dakota against the Farmers Home Administration, a federal lending agency threatening foreclosure on many multigenerational, mid-level family farms at the time. The titular farmer's lawyer herself, Vogel spins an engaging, suspenseful, and often heartbreaking account of her bumbling performances as an untested trial lawyer. Sympathetic bailiffs and court clerks helped her with technicalities; her father, a former North Dakota supreme court justice, offered advice; and an understanding judge led to success at the state level--and an addition of over 240,000 additional plaintiffs once the case moved to the national level. The final decision resulted in changes in federal laws. Vogel is a good storyteller, and this stirring account is testimony to her continuing work as a strong advocate for America's farmers.

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October 15, 2021
A lawyer recalls how a group of mistreated farmers stood up to the U.S. government--and forced changes in federal law--by joining forces in a class-action lawsuit. Few people today may recall the severity of the nationwide crisis that led to the Farm Aid benefit concerts and eventually to the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, which curbed some of the injustices that fueled it. This welcome refresher course focuses on a pivotal class-action lawsuit by farmers (Coleman v. Block), blending courtroom drama with a memoir by the plaintiffs' lead counsel, a young single mother who not only had never tried a case, but hadn't set foot in a courtroom. Vogel had returned to her native North Dakota from a government job in Washington, D.C., when farmers began contacting her about unfair or illegal actions by the Farmers Home Administration, a federal agency that made loans to family farmers. Pressured by the Reagan administration to slash farm aid, the agency dealt harshly with farmers who fell behind on loan repayments, often because of drought or other natural disasters. It emptied farmers' bank accounts, seized money they needed to feed their cattle or families, and foreclosed on those only one payment behind on real estate debt. It also failed to give farmers proper notice of legal actions against them and turned hearings on their grievances into kangaroo courts run by people who'd been involved in the unfair actions against them. Vogel lost her house while representing the farmers, most of whom couldn't pay her, but she saw impressive displays of rural grit and solidarity and later became North Dakota's first female agriculture commissioner. Though this memoir lacks the literary flair of books like Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, it's a brave attorney's clear and thorough story of the power of collective legal action that belongs in every law library. A well-documented eyewitness account of egregious injustices to family farmers.

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