The company is trumpeting the appellate panel’s conclusions that the trial court had wrongly barred a key company defense and allowed punitive damages for the specific product liability claim of post-sale failure to warn — both of which involved questions about whether certain provisions of law from Monsanto’s home state of Missouri could be applied to the case. The ruling also struck certain expert testimony on toxic exposure levels that Monsanto has characterized as integral to the entire case group.
“The company will pursue the reversal of the seven other past verdicts based on the Erickson appeal ruling,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Law360. “Because there are some additional appellate issues in each of the prior cases and they are at different stages of the post-trial process, the timing, substance, and form of these actions will vary from case to case.”
Counsel for the plaintiffs, meanwhile, just last week urged the Washington state Supreme Court to review the appellate panel’s decision. In a Friday petition seeking the high court’s review, the Erickson plaintiffs wrote that the case “presents three important, recurring, and unsettled questions of law that will immediately affect dozens of parallel pending cases, comprising the claims of more than two hundred victims of toxic chemical exposure and over $1 billion in verdicts already handed down across eight trials.”
