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Seattle, WA - A group of public school teachers is urging the Washington State Supreme Court to review a state appellate court decision that overturned their $185 million win in a PCB tort case against Monsanto. The teachers contend that the ruling stifles plaintiffs' rights in cases stemming from the same school site and other product liability litigation.

The teachers, led by Kerry L. Erickson, argue that the three-judge panel from the Washington Court of Appeals' first division erred when it reversed the $185 million verdict. Monsanto had argued that it should have been able to assert the Evergreen State's statute of repose as a defense. In a Friday petition, the teachers urged the state's high court to revisit the ruling, focusing on the finding that their claims were potentially limited by the rule that product sellers usually can't be held liable for harm occurring after the product's 12-year "useful safe life" expires.

"If the harsh logic of the Division One decision is allowed to stand, the claims of injured Washington residents can be extinguished long before they ever arise, long before anyone could conceivably have discovered their cause, and in the case of every child plaintiff involved, long before the victim was even born," the teachers stated in their petition for review.

The three teachers, joined by one of their spouses, were the first among more than 200 plaintiffs tied to the Sky Valley Education Center to take their claims to trial. They presented evidence that they were sickened by Monsanto-made polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) emitted by aging fluorescent light ballasts at the school site, roughly 35 miles northeast of Seattle. The cases have so far resulted in more than $1.2 billion in losses for Pharmacia LLC, the Monsanto spin-off responsible for litigation stemming from its manufacture of PCBs from the 1930s to 1977, with more cases pending trial.

Reversing a King County Superior Court jury's $185 million award to the three teachers, the Court of Appeals panel concluded that the trial court wrongly determined that the Washington Product Liability Act's statute of repose did not apply to the case. Instead, it had looked to the product liability law of Monsanto's home state of Missouri, which does not have a similar time limit for defective product claims.

The appellate judges remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings, noting potential factual issues regarding whether the statute of repose is fatal to the plaintiffs' case. The law includes exceptions that preserve a claimant's ability to sue beyond the 12-year time frame in certain circumstances, such as if the seller warranted the product for longer or caused the harm by misrepresenting or concealing certain information about the product.