Monsanto to Pay $46.5 Million in PCB Lawsuit in Rare Win

Monsanto to Pay $46.5 Million in PCB Lawsuit in Rare Win

Postby Oscar » Sat May 28, 2016 5:52 pm

Monsanto Ordered to Pay $46.5 Million in PCB Lawsuit in Rare Win for Plaintiffs

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By: EcoWatch May 27, 2016

Written by Lorraine Chow and reposted with permission from EcoWatch

A St. Louis jury has awarded three plaintiffs a total of $46.5 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Monsanto [ http://ecowatch.com/?s=monsanto ] and three other companies were negligent in its handling of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a highly toxic and carcinogenic group of chemicals. [ http://ecowatch.com/?s=PCBs ]

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Monsanto PCB lawsuit

This case, which went on trial April 28, involved only three of nearly 100 plaintiffs claiming that exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Photo credit: GMO Free USA

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Yesterday’s 10-2 verdict in St. Louis Circuit Court awarded $17.5 million in damages to the three plaintiffs and assessed an additional $29 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, Solutia, Pharmacia and Pfizer, the St. Louis Dispatch reported. [ http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... a6c2e.html ]

PCBs were used to insulate electronics decades ago. Before switching operations to agriculture, Monsanto was the sole manufacturer of the compound from 1935 until 1977. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned PCBs in 1979, [ https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-bans-p ... s-out-uses ] due to its link to birth defects and cancer in laboratory animals. PCBs can also have adverse skin and liver effects in humans. PCBs linger in the environment for many decades.

The lawsuit claims that Monsanto continued to sell the compounds even after it learned about its dangers and falsely told the public they were safe. Indeed, internal documents have surfaced showing that Monsanto knew about the health risks of PCBs long before they were banned. A document, dated Sept. 20, 1955, stated: “We know Aroclors [PCBs] are toxic but the actual limit has not been precisely defined.”

The verdict is the first such victory in the city of St. Louis and a seemingly rare win overall. Monsanto has historically prevailed in similar lawsuits filed against the company over deaths and illnesses related to PCBs, as MintPress News noted. [ http://www.mintpressnews.com/residents- ... er/206513/ ]

“This is the future,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Kherkher of Houston told EcoWatch.

“The only reason why this victory is rare is because no one has had the money to fight Monsanto,” explaining that his law firm, Williams Kherkher, and other law firms pooled their resources to get the case off the ground.

“It’s not going to be rare anymore,” he said as his law firm has accumulated about 1,000 plaintiffs surrounding PCBs.

As more cases mount against the company, Kherkher said, “every judge allows us to acquire more and more information from Monsanto and discover their documents. There is a lot more information out there that has yet to be mined.”

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Oscar
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