Monsanto must pay WA teachers $185M in fluorescent light ‘poisoning’ suit, jury finds
A jury awarded three teachers $185 million after Monsanto was found to be responsible for “poisoning teachers, students and parents” at a Washington school, the law firm representing the teachers said.
The jury announced its verdict July 27 in the case of Erickson et. al. v. Monsanto, according to a news release from Friedman Rubin, a Seattle-based law firm.
The teachers were the first plaintiffs to reach a trial after “a group of over 200 teachers, students and parents [were] exposed to leaking PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyls) ballasts in fluorescent light fixtures at the [Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe]” between 2011 and 2016, the firm said. Monroe is located in Snohomish County, about 90 minutes north of Tacoma.
“The verdict follows years of hard-fought litigation between Monsanto, now owned by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and a group of parents, students and teachers who would not give up in their quest for justice,” according to the release.
A spokesperson for Bayer said the company doesn’t produce these products any longer, according to ABC News.
“These are historic claims that relate to products Monsanto has not produced in more than 40 years,” Bayer spokesperson Susan Skiles Luke said in a statement to ABC. “The undisputed evidence in this case does not support the conclusions that plaintiffs were exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs at the Sky Valley Education Center (SVEC) or that any exposure could have possibly caused their claimed injuries.”
PCBs were commonly used in fluorescent light ballasts through 1979 and the Environmental Protection Agency “recommends removing PCB-containing FLBs from buildings as soon as possible to prevent potential inhalation or dermal exposure,” the EPA website says.
Rick Friedman, lead counsel of the firm, originally asked for each teacher to be awarded $10 million and “punitive damages of [3] times that award” from Monsanto.
The jury awarded each of the teachers $45 million “to punish Monsanto for its reckless disregard of safety and to deter other manufacturers from repeating similar reprehensible conduct in the future,” according to the firm’s release.
“This is a big step in holding Monsanto accountable for poisoning every man, woman and child in North America. If politicians won’t make Monsanto clean up its mess, juries will,” Friedman said in the release.