Posted on 25-2-2002
US
Jury Finds Against Monsanto
Michael Grunwald, Washington Post 23feb02, photo shows Anniston
Monsanto
factory
An Alabama jury has found that Monsanto Co. engaged in "outrageous"
behavior by releasing tons of polychlorinated biphenyl into
the city of
Anniston and covering up its actions for decades, handing 3,500
local
residents a huge victory in a landmark environmental lawsuit.
The jury in Gadsden, Ala., a town 20 miles from Anniston, yesterday
held
Monsanto and its corporate successors liable on all six counts
it
considered: negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth,
nuisance,
trespass and outrage. Under Alabama law, the rare claim of outrage
typically requires conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme
in
degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as
to be regarded
as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."
After a six-week liability trial, the case now proceeds to a
damages phase.
Solutia Inc., the corporation formed when Monsanto spun off
its chemical
division in 1997, has already spent $83 million to settle two
other PCB
cases in Anniston as well as $40 million on cleanup costs. Shares
in
Solutia, the lead defendant in the case, plunged 34 percent
to $5.80 after
yesterday's verdict. Overall, they have plummeted 59 percent
from $14.02
since a Jan. 1 story in the Washington Post revealed Monsanto
documents
showing that the company routinely dumped PCB in Anniston and
covered up
its behavior for more than 40 years.
Meanwhile, 15,000 additional area residents have filed another
lawsuit
citing health problems, property damages and emotional distress
caused by
PCB contamination. And a Senate committee is preparing to hold
hearings on
the situation. Solutia CEO John Hunter said his company is "extremely
disappointed" with yesterday's verdict. "This case is not over,"
said
Solutia spokeswoman Beth Rusert. "But regardless of how it turns
out, we're
going to do our part to clean up the PCBs in this community."
Polychlorinated biphenyl has been banned in the United States
since 1979,
but it was once known as a life-saver, nonflammable coolant
that prevented
explosions in electrical equipment. From 1935 on, Monsanto was
the only
American company that made PCB, at one plant in Illinois and
another in
working-class west Anniston. Today, PCB is known as a global
pollutant and
possible carcinogen, although debate still rages over the extent
of its
risks to human health. The Bush administration recently ordered
General
Electric to spend $460 million to dredge its PCB out of the
Hudson River,
but scientists say the situation in Anniston is much worse.
Yards and
creeks there have the highest levels of PCBs ever recorded in
a community,
and people have unprecedented PCB levels in their blood.
Anniston residents did not learn about the pollution until 1996,
even
though documents show that Monsanto knew about it for decades.
In 1966, for
example, Monsanto managers discovered that fish dunked in a
local creek
turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding
skin as if
dunked into boiling water. In 1969, they found a fish in another
creek with
7,500 times the legal PCB level. But they never told their neighbors,
and
concluded that "there is little object in going to expensive
extremes in
limiting discharges. "Those people destroyed this community,"
said David
Baker, president of the local group Citizens Against Pollution.
"They
poisoned us, they profited from us, and now it's time for them
to pay."
At the trial, attorneys representing Monsanto and its corporate
kin argued
that the company acted "promptly and responsibly" to limit its
PCB releases
once it learned that the chemicals could linger in nature for
centuries.
They also pointed out that the Anniston plant stopped making
PCB eight
years before a national ban took effect. Those arguments were
undermined by
documents -- many featuring warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL:
Read and
Destroy" -- that suggested a companywide preoccupation with
maintaining its
$22-million-a-year PCB monopoly regardless of health or environmental
risks. "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business," one
internal memo
declared. A committee the company formed to address controversies
about PCB
had only two formal objectives: "Permit continued sales and
profits" and
"protect image of . . . the corporation. "Ultimately, Monsanto's
own words
did them in," said Brendan DeMelle, an analyst for the Environmental
Working Group, an anti-chemical advocacy group.
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