Monsanto settles with over 200 exposed to chemicals in Monroe school

A major settlement announced this week brought an end to a lengthy battle between chemical manufacturer Monsanto and students, parents and staff of a Monroe school who were exposed to toxic PCBs for years.

PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are human-made chemicals that the Environmental Protection Agency has linked to some cancers and other illnesses. They festered at Sky Valley Education Center, an alternative school in Snohomish County, where fluorescent lights and building caulking were contaminated. The preservatives were once widely relied upon for building durability, but the EPA has since banned their use.

More than 200 people from Sky Valley blamed their serious illnesses on exposure to the toxicant and launched a legal campaign beginning in 2018. They alleged that Monsanto knew about the toxicity of PCBs but hid that information from the public.

This week’s announcement marks the largest, and only significant, PCB personal injury settlement since Monsanto was acquired by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in 2018, Bayer said. And it appears to be among the largest, if not the largest, PCB settlement stemming from a single site containing the pollutant.

The terms of the settlement, including the dollar amount, are confidential. But in July, before the agreement, Germany-based Bayer informed its investors that it had set aside about $618 million, for Sky Valley settlements and litigation costs.

Bayer told the Seattle Times it stands by its long-held position that “undisputed evidence” refutes the claims made by the Sky Valley complainants. The company said it did not admit to liability or wrongdoing in the settlement.

A 2022 Times and ProPublica investigation into Sky Valley’s PCB problem detailed how the Monroe School District knew about the school’s exposure to PCBs, but acted slowly and ineffectively to clear the campus of PCBs, despite telling the EPA it resolved the crisis. The district offered Sky Valley plaintiffs $34 million – the maximum allowed under its insurance policy – without accepting responsibility for the school’s hazardous state, the Times and ProPublica reported.

Harmful PCBs seeped into classrooms and hallways from fluorescent lights and building caulking infused with PCBs, the Times reported.

Since 2018, a Seattle-based firm has filed lawsuits on behalf of Sky Valley students, staff and others who described devastating diagnoses, including various cancers, brain damage, autoimmune diseases and miscarriages. Some, including children, reportedly died as a result of their illnesses, the lawsuits claim.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked PCB exposure to health symptoms including impaired memory and learning ability, skin conditions and liver problems.

Richard Friedman, one of the lawyers representing the Sky Valley plaintiffs, said he couldn’t comment on the settlement except to say that it had been “resolved to the mutual satisfaction of all parties.”

He added that his clients could not comment on the settlement either.

The agreement resolves all but nine lawsuits relating to Sky Valley. The lingering cases are under appeal. Juries sided with 49 plaintiffs in those cases, awarding them more than $1 billion. Monsanto fought the verdicts and, just last year, the Washington Court of Appeals overturned the first ruling.

To date, 10 cases involving 80 people have been tried. Bayer told the Times that for 31 plaintiffs, juries sided with Monsanto or their cases ended in a hung jury.

The Washington Supreme Court took up the first case that was successfully appealed, in which a jury awarded $185 million to three teachers and one of their spouses. A teacher in the case, Michelle Leahy, suffered persistent rashes, blisters in her mouth and cognitive problems. She eventually developed uterine cancer and was forced to stop working, she told the Times in 2022.

The case was novel at the time because the plaintiffs’ lawyers won punitive damages, despite Washington state laws generally prohibiting them. Instead, lawyers successfully fought to apply laws from Missouri, where Monsanto was headquartered.

The state Supreme Court has yet to rule on the case. Meanwhile, the other eight appeals are on hold until the state’s highest court makes a decision in Leahy’s case.

Washington has a history of battling the chemical giant. In 2016, it became the first state to sue Monsanto for polluting waterways with PCBs, which threatened the environment, salmon and other wildlife.

Washington’s case, led by then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is now governor, didn’t focus on direct human health impacts. But the heart of its case echoed that of the Sky Valley plaintiffs: Monsanto allegedly concealed the dangers of PCBs. Similar to the Sky Valley suits, Bayer did not admit to wrongdoing in the settlement.

Washington reached a $95 million settlement with Monsanto. Ferguson described the settlement as a win for Washington at the time.

“Washington has been shouldering the health and environmental costs of PCB contamination and clean up for decades,” he said in a statement in 2020, the year his office closed its case with Monsanto. “This record payment holds Monsanto accountable for the harm they inflicted on our state.”