Monsanto must pay $857 million in PCB case, jury rules

A jury in Washington state decided Monday that Monsanto must pay $857 million to former students and parent volunteers who said they were exposed to dangerous chemicals made by the company at a school and later fell ill, court records show.

The Seattle Superior Court jury said Monsanto must pay $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages to five students who attended Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, northeast of Seattle, and two parents who had volunteered there.

The former students and parents said they were made ill by chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that had leaked from lighting fixtures at the school, Mr. Jones said. The chemicals in the fixtures are made by Monsanto, which bought Bayer in 2018.

The verdict, which will be reviewed by a judge, would add to billions of dollars in similar awards awarded by juries that have bedeviled Bayer in the years since it took over Monsanto.

Henry Jones, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an email Monday after the verdict: “No one who heard this evidence would ever trade places with any of these people in exchange for all the money the jury awarded.”

Monsanto said in a statement Monday that it planned to appeal the verdict to overturn the “constitutionally excessive damages awarded.”

“The objective evidence in this case, including blood, air and other tests, demonstrates that the plaintiffs were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs, and that PCBs could not have caused their alleged injuries,” the company said.

The plaintiffs include former students and parent volunteers who worked at the Sky Valley Education Center beginning in 2005, court documents show. They claim they suffered neurological, neurophysiological, endocrine and autoimmune problems after being exposed to chemicals at school, according to court documents.

The Monroe School District, which includes Sky Valley Education Center, in Washington state did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon.

PCBs were once regularly found in commercial products and industrial equipment, such as lighting, until they were banned in the United States in 1979 over concerns that they would harm people and the environment, according to the 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.

According to the EPA, there is compelling evidence that PCBs can cause cancer in animals and harm their immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems. The chemicals are classified as “probably carcinogenic” to humans, according to the agency.

Since Bayer acquired Monsanto, the company has faced costly legal battles over concerns about harmful chemicals produced by Monsanto, such as Roundup, the herbicide.

Bayer agreed to pay $10 billion in 2020 to settle claims that Roundup caused cancer, one of the largest such settlements. The company has said it has set aside another $6 billion for pending lawsuits and other lawsuits that could be filed later.