Monsanto PCBs 'Pervasive' At School, Scientist Tells Jury
By Cara Salvatore · Listen to article
Law360 (October 29, 2024, 11:14 PM EDT) -- Monsanto-made PCBs were "pervasive" at a Washington school, an industrial hygienist testified Tuesday in the latest trial over illnesses there before being grilled by defense counsel about the integrity of his material samples.
Scientist Kevin Coghlan walked a jury through the results of multiple rounds of testing by various environmental companies as well as by his own outfit concerning the multi-building Sky Valley Educational Center, about 35 miles northeast of Seattle, which in 2011 took over a 1967 building complex in which old fluorescent light fixtures and classroom caulk were slowly releasing polychlorinated biphenyls, plaintiffs claim.
"The PCB levels were pretty much scattered around the entire campus of Sky Valley. They were pervasive throughout the facility, either in bulk materials, or in the air in a number of cases, or certainly within light fixtures that were wipe-sampled," Coghlan told the jury, referring to sampling by swabbing a surface.
The ongoing trial involves student Gunnar L.G. Rose and 14 other individuals who claim they developed a variety of health conditions due to use of the school buildings. Monsanto sold numerous formulations of the dielectric insulating liquids under the brand name Aroclor, producing 1.2 billion pounds of them from the 1930s to the 1970s, juries have heard. The fluid filled small capacitor ballast boxes in hundreds of fluorescent light fixtures at the complex. But the company knew of the now-banned chemicals' extreme toxicity for decades, lawyers say.
Coghlan said different Aroclor formulas, identified by four-digit numbers, were in other materials as well, not just ballast boxes.
Aroclors "1016 and 1242 is fluid within metal capacitors," Coghlan told the jury. "The 1260 is actually in that brown or black material in the capacitor, [and] the caulking itself that's all around the building would have 1254 in it."
These chemicals are so good at spreading by air that, for example, 1016 was found in the caulk because the vapor spread and stuck there, Coghlan said.
From the various data available, he estimated that throughout the school, from the time it began being used by Sky Valley in 2011 until before the remediation in 2016, the PCB levels were anywhere from undetectable to 3,000 nanograms per cubic meter.
Various government agencies put the safe level much lower, Coghlan said.
Coghlan showed jurors documents explaining that an environmental company called PBS did testing in 2016; a company called ALS Environmental tested in 2016 as well; and a company called EHSI did some limited testing in 2014.
Years later, Coghlan himself also received samples of carpet that had been preserved by an educator at the school, a Dr. Yost.
On cross-examination, a defense lawyer for Monsanto suggested to Coghlan there was no way to be sure these samples were in good shape because of how they had been stored by the educator from 2016, when she collected them, until 2019.
She asked Coghlan whether Ziploc bags are porous when it comes to PCBs; Coghlan said they can be, and admitted that was how Yost stored them.
"But you don't have any idea what was going on in Dr. Yost's basement for the three years before?" the lawyer asked. Coghlan answered that Yost hadn't indicated there was anything notable about the storage environment.
"You didn't take air measurements, right?" the lawyer asked. Coghlan agreed he hadn't.
He also admitted Yost had stored the usable samples in the same room as a sample that was considered inappropriate for exposure testing because it had been so saturated with PCB oil residue from a leak. Coghlan agreed they were all stored in Ziplocs in the basement.
Cross-examination continues Wednesday.
The case is the tenth Sky Valley case to go to trial; Washington's Supreme Court this month agreed to take up the first of them, called Erickson, after three teachers' $185 million victory was overturned in May by the state's Court of Appeals.
Pharmacia LLC, a Monsanto spinoff that its once-parent is defending in litigation over PCBs made from the 1930s to 1977, so far faces an additional $1.1 billion-plus in verdicts from the trials but has appealed those losses. Monsanto was acquired by Bayer AG in 2018.
The Rose plaintiffs are represented by Henry Jones, Sean Gamble, Richard Friedman, James Hertz and Ronald Park of Friedman Rubin PLLP, Colleen Peterson and Bridget Grotz of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC and Nicholas Rowley, Courtney Rowley and Theresa Hatch of Trial Lawyers for Justice.
Monsanto is represented by Steven Fogg, Emily Harris and Lucio Maldonado of Corr Cronin LLP, Liz Blackwell and Darci Madden of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, Kimberly Branscome of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP, Anthony Upshaw of McDermott Will & Emery LLP and Lindsey Boney IV of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.
The case is Gunnar L.G. Rose et al. v. Pharmacia LLC, case number 87281-8, in King County Superior Court.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
