Monsanto must pay 857 million in damages

A US jury has sentenced the Bayer subsidiary Monsanto to pay a fine worth millions. The company is liable for the use of the toxic chemical PCB in lamps at a school in the USA.

Heavy penalty for Monsanto: A jury in Washington state has sentenced the Bayer subsidiary to pay $857 million. Several former students and parent council members at a school northeast of Seattle had complained that chemicals known as PCBs were leaking from light fixtures and making them sick. The US company produced polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) until 1977.

A jury in Seattle found Monsanto guilty of selling polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that were unsafe and did not contain adequate warnings. According to information from the Reuters news agency, the verdict includes $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages.

Monsanto announces appeal

A statement from Monsanto said the arbitration award was “constitutionally excessive” and that the company would apply to have the ruling overturned or reduced. Monsanto previously said blood, air and other tests showed employees were not exposed to unsafe levels of PCBs at the school. Yesterday’s verdict is the latest legal defeat for Monsanto, which was ordered to pay $165 million to school employees at the end of November.

PCBs are chemicals that were used to insulate electrical devices, but were also found in floor cleaners and paint. The U.S. government banned the chemicals in 1979 after discovering links to cancer. Monsanto stopped production in 1977. The school had been warned repeatedly since the 1990s that its lights needed to be upgraded, but those warnings had been ignored.

Burden for Bayer

There was initially no comment from German parent Bayer. Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion. For years, the legal proceedings in the USA against Monsanto over the production of glyphosate and PCBs have placed a financial burden on the German mother.

The fact that Monsanto has now again been sentenced to pay a fine of millions will probably not be entirely without consequences for Bayer. With a loss of a good third, Bayer is already one of the weakest stocks in the DAX. Recently, a study flop for the hopeful Asundexian – a blood clotting inhibitor in development – accelerated the downward trend of the papers.