A jury in Washington State ruled Monday that Monsanto must pay $857 million to former students and parent volunteers who said they were exposed at a school to dangerous chemicals produced by the company and later became ill, according to in court records.
A Seattle Superior Court jury ordered Monsanto to pay $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages to five students who attended the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Wash., northeast of Seattle, and two parents who volunteered there.
Former students and parents said they became ill from chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that leaked from light fixtures at the school, according to Henry Jones, an attorney for the plaintiffs. The chemicals in the fixtures are made by Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018.
The verdict, which will be reviewed by a judge, will add to the billions of dollars in similar amounts awarded by juries that have plagued Bayer in the years since it acquired Monsanto.
Mr. Jones said in an email Monday after the verdict, “No one who heard this evidence would trade places with any of these people for all the money the jury awarded.”
Monsanto said in a statement Monday that it plans to appeal to overturn the verdict and challenge the “constitutionally excessive damages awarded.”
“The objective evidence in this case, including blood, air and other tests, shows that the plaintiffs were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs, and that PCBs could not have caused their alleged damage,” the company said.
The plaintiffs include former students and parent volunteers who have been at Sky Valley Education Center since 2005, according to court documents. They say they suffered neurological, neurophysiological, endocrine and autoimmune issues after being exposed to chemicals at school, according to court documents.
The Monroe School District, which includes the Sky Valley Education Center, in Washington State did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.
PCBs were once routinely found in commercial products and industrial equipment, such as lighting, until they were banned in the United States in 1979 amid concerns that they were harmful to humans and the environment. , according to Environmental Protection Agency.
Products containing PCBs are no longer commercially produced in the United States, but the chemicals may still be present in products made before they were banned, according to the EPA
Conclusive evidence has found that PCBs can cause cancer in animals, as well as damage their immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems, according to the EPA The chemicals are classified as “probably carcinogenic” to humans, according to to the agency.
Since Bayer bought Monsanto, the company has been embroiled in expensive legal battles over concerns about Monsanto-made chemicals, such as Roundup, the weed killer.
Bayer agreed to pay $10 billion in 2020 to settle claims that Roundup caused cancer, one of the largest such settlements. The company said it has set aside an additional $6 billion for ongoing lawsuits and others that may be filed later.
