A North Carolina jury awarded $50 million to neighbors of a 15,000-hog farm in Eastern North Carolina in a case being closely watched across the country by environmentalists and the hog farm industry.

The verdict, revealed April 26 after a jury deliberated less than two days, is the first to come in a series of federal lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer.

In this case decided in a federal courtroom in Raleigh, 10 neighbors contended that industrial-scale hog operations have known for decades that the open-air sewage pits on their properties were the source of noxious, sickening and overwhelming odors. The stench was so thick, the neighbors argued, that it was impossible to get it out of their clothes.

A team of lawyers began crafting the legal argument in 2014. They focused on the continued use of “anaerobic lagoons,” where hog waste was stored behind the livestock pens, then liquified and sprayed onto nearby fields.

They argued such a practice presented a public nuisance and went after the pork producers.

Smithfield Foods was bought in 2013 by China’s WH Group, the world’s largest pork producer. The company has not changed its method of disposal since the 1980s and ‘90s.

Attorneys for the neighbors argued that waste treatment methods had evolved and the pork production operations in Eastern North Carolina have not changed their methods because it keeps operational costs low.