A Lemon Grower’s Lawsuit Says Duarte Nursery Sold Him the Wrong Trees, a Variety That Bears a Quarter Less Fruit.

On Feb. 5, 2015, Tulare County citrus grower Ron Turner, who does business as Turner Nursery, signed a contract with Duarte Nursery for “8A Lisbon” lemon trees to plant on 12 acres. Lisbon is a California workhorse. The University of California, Riverside’s Citrus Variety Collection calls it the “most vigorous of varieties grown in California” and credits its popularity to its “vigor, hardiness, and high productivity.”

Turner’s lawsuit says that is not what he got. Filed in 2023, it says the trees were a seedless variety, that it is “well known in the citrus industry” that seedless lemon trees produce about 25% fewer lemons, and that Turner did not discover the difference until late September 2022, when the trees were “not producing as expected.” By then the grove had been harvested for five seasons. The difference may not have been obvious from the fruit alone: the same UC Riverside description says Lisbon’s seed content is “variable, but usually few to none.”

What a wrong tree costs

A young lemon tree in a nursery pot gives little away. Even John Duarte later testified that he couldn’t imagine how nursery workers could tell by looking whether one was a Lisbon. A grower learns what he bought only when the fruit comes in, years after planting. Then he faces a hard choice: harvest a smaller crop for as long as the trees live, or tear them out and give up years of harvests while new trees grow.

Turner’s lawsuit put a price on the first choice. It said the 12 acres had grossed $428,536 since the 2017–18 season, at least $107,134 less than the right trees would have produced, and estimated at least $240,857 more in future losses, for a total of at least $347,991.

The contract lists 2,200 trees at $12 each, or $26,450 with a permit fee. Court filings give other figures: the lawsuit says Turner paid $22,450 for 1,800 trees, and Duarte Nursery’s lawyer later put the price at $25,020. An amended complaint says a Duarte field representative assured Turner before the sale that he would receive 8A Lisbon trees, “not the seedless lemon trees” he says he got, and that “John or Jeff Duarte, Officer and Director” signed the contract for the nursery. John Duarte later testified that the signature was his father’s: Jim Duarte, the company’s chairman of the board.

The fraud claim

Turner first accused the nursery of fraud and sought punitive damages. In March 2024, Judge Sonny Sandhu found that the complaint described “how, when, where, to whom, and by what means” the representations were made, but did not allege enough facts to show the nursery knew its statements were false or meant to deceive. He gave Turner 30 days to try again. Turner’s revised complaint dropped the fraud claim and the punitive damages and kept claims for breach of contract, negligence, and negligent misrepresentation.

What John Duarte said under oath

On April 10, 2025, John Duarte testified as Duarte Nursery’s “person most qualified,” the witness a company designates to speak for it. He said the nursery’s field representatives are independent contractors over whom it has “very little” control. He called the representative who sold Turner’s trees the nursery’s citrus lead and “our most knowledgeable on the crop growing citrus.”

Asked whether the nursery had ever noticed that the trees were not the variety it expected, he said no. The nursery culls “off type” trees when it can spot them, he said, but “We had no record of anything like that happening in our lemons, period.” He added that “no one in the company has spoken about a lemon mix-up.”

He confirmed that the nursery offered to settle for a refund of what Turner had paid. Asked why, he answered: “So, I wouldn’t sit in a room with lawyers when I could be out selling other trees.”

What the grower said under oath

Turner testified in June 2025 that after the fruit was cut open in 2022 and found to be seedless, he called the Duarte representative who had sold him the trees. According to Turner, the representative came to the orchard and “said that we had a problem and gave you the wrong budwood,” the cuttings a nursery grafts onto rootstock to produce a particular variety, but “didn’t go into details.” Turner said the representative offered to replace the trees, but when Turner asked about his lost production, he was told: “we won’t have anything to do with that.”

Turner acknowledged that he turned down a refund. A letter from Duarte’s lawyers says the nursery first offered $25,020 at an Oct. 18, 2022 meeting and repeated the offer in November 2023 in exchange for Turner dropping all claims. A refund would have returned what Turner paid for the trees, not the harvests he said he had lost. Asked why he refused, Turner said he “thought I was doing the right thing,” adding: “I wish I would have at this point, but I didn’t.”

The fine print

In October 2025, Duarte Nursery asked the court to end the case without a trial. It relied on paragraph 14 on the back of its standard contract, which disclaims any implied warranty that the trees are fit for their purpose and caps any recovery at the purchase price. Its arguments are summarized in the response section below.

The same paragraph, word for word, appears in the contracts of pistachio growers who sued the nursery over defective rootstock. In March 2022, more than three years before Duarte relied on it against Turner, a Stanislaus County judge ruled that its warranty disclaimer and damages limit were “unconscionable and, therefore, unenforceable” in the pistachio case. In a December 2024 tentative decision, he reached the same conclusion about the disclaimer for another group of growers. Those rulings turned on the facts of the pistachio case and did not decide Turner’s.

No court decided whether the nursery delivered the wrong trees. Turner’s lawyer notified the court that the case settled on Nov. 7, 2025, about two months before the summary judgment hearing. The terms were not disclosed. On Jan. 6, 2026, the court dismissed the case with prejudice at Turner’s request, meaning it cannot be filed again.

Alexandra Duarte, a Republican, is running for California State Senate District 4 on the Nov. 3, 2026 ballot. She is married to former Rep. John Duarte, who has served as the nursery’s president.