Monsanto Settles Suit on Chemicals for $1.5 Million

Monsanto Co. has agreed to a $1.5-million settlement in a massive chemical poisoning case filed by more than 170 former plant workers, lawyers said Wednesday.

As part of the agreement, Monsanto will pay $1.2 million to six former workers who claim their exposure to a rubber additive at the company’s Nitro plant gave them a rare form of bladder cancer.

The St. Louis-based corporation also has agreed to drop its $300,000 court costs claim against six other Monsanto workers who unsuccessfully claimed the company recklessly exposed them to dioxin. Monsanto had attached liens to the retirees’ homes to guarantee payment of the debt.

The settlement, reached a week before five of the six bladder cancer cases were to go to trial in U.S. District Court in Charleston, ends seven years of litigation and means 127 other dioxin-related claims and 34 other chemical poisoning claims will be dropped, lawyers said.

“I am very pleased for my clients,” said Stuart Calwell, a Charleston lawyer who filed the litigation against Monsanto in 1981. “We had four aged and ill people, so I think for them it’s a very good settlement.”

Monsanto will pay $200,000 awarded in 1985 to retiree John Hein, who proved that exposure to PAB, a rubber additive, caused his bladder cancer and that Monsanto ignored the risk.

While Hein won that claim, he and six other retirees in the same marathon trial lost their dioxin poisoning claims.

It was after that trial that Monsanto sought to recover $304,000 from the retirees, a fraction of its total court costs in the case. The workers faced losing their homes if the chemical company prevailed.

“We’re relieved, of course, that it’s over,” said Monsanto lawyer Charles Love III. “We do not believe we injured these people intentionally. However, rather than go through this again, we decided to settle the matter.”

Until 1983, West Virginia law allowed employees to sue their employers for job-related injuries if workers could prove willful and reckless disregard for their safety.

The federal court jury hearing the dioxin claims found that the highly-toxic chemical, a contaminant of Agent Orange production in the 1950s and 1960s, was dangerous to Monsanto employees’ health. The jury ruled, however, that the workers failed to prove Monsanto knowingly risked their safety.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the workers’ dioxin appeal and Calwell said the five PAB-related claims were “really all that’s left of the case.”