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But in comments to the trial court and to Law360, plaintiffs' counsel downplayed the appellate ruling's significance, calling it relatively narrow and specific to the court's handling of the Erickson case.

Jones told Law360 last week that even if the state's high court partially or fully agrees with the Court of Appeals, the impacts would be limited to — at most — narrow retrials on a certain company defense.

As for the stricken expert testimony that Monsanto claims is so critical, the exposure calculations that the Court of Appeals deemed inadmissible account for roughly six minutes of five hours of the expert's testimony, Jones said. He added that the panel "did not find this to be reversible error, so it should have no impact on the verdicts."

The calculations were made by an industrial hygienist to estimate historic levels of PCBs at the school site when the teachers worked there, since the plaintiffs do not have testing data from that time period.

Dozens of Cases Target Monsanto

The nine cases that have been tried have featured the claims of a mix of children and adults who spent time at the school site, which was Monroe Middle School before it became an education center for homeschool families. The individuals blame PCBs that were emitted by old fluorescent light fixtures and other building materials there for various health conditions, including breathing problems, brain injuries, hormonal dysfunctions and cancer.

While one case ended in a mistrial and partial finding in Monsanto's favor, the other juries have agreed that the company caused injury to some or all of the plaintiffs in each trial group by supplying a product that was not reasonably safe. The defendant named in the cases is Pharmacia LLC, a corporate spinoff that Monsanto has agreed to defend in litigation stemming from its manufacture of PCBs from the 1930s to 1977.

King County Superior Court Judge Jim Rogers, who's overseeing case management of the lawsuit series, has postponed an upcoming trial that was expected to begin on May 20 to January and outlined a plan to consider consolidation of plaintiff groups for future trials. Otherwise, the judge has said, trying the more than 20 cases remaining would probably take nearly a decade.

Judge Rogers also rejected Monsanto's bid, just days after the Erickson ruling came down, to get the trial court to undo the plaintiffs' most recent win in Bard v. Monsanto based on the appellate panel's reasoning. He did not comment on the merits of the company's arguments, but instead said he would let the appellate process play out.