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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Monsanto lawsuits article
  • Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:28:39 -0500

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/B5D3D29881A9C72C8625763F000A7FCA?OpenDocument

Monsanto, cousins face series of suits in Sauget

SEPT. 24, 2009 -- A variety of chemical companies that do business in Sauget, Ill., including Cerro Flow Products, Inc., Pfizer Inc., Pharmacia Corporation, Solutia Inc. and Monsanto AG Products, LLC, are involved in a series of lawsuits filed in St. Clair County Circuit Court for allegedly polluting surrounding air and property, causing cancers and other medical illnesses to nearby residents. This photograph, taken late Thursday afternoon, depicts several chemical companies set against the St. Louis skyline. (Erik M. Lunsford/P-D)
By Nicholas J.C. Pistor
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/28/2009

SAUGET — This village was born under the name "Monsanto" more than 80 years ago as a company town, where the chemical behemoth could hold sway over local taxes and regulations.

The smokestacks have gushed ever since.

Now, Andrea Brown, who has lived nearby her entire life, suspects the fumes from the village's variety of heavy industries caused her brain aneurysm and lung ailments.

"Look around," Brown, 39, said in an interview. "Everyone here looks old. These people are not that old, and they look as old as hell around here."



Along with her mother and brother, Brown is working with a group of lawyers suing several companies that operated in Sauget, alleging that decades of dumping and burning caused health complications for people who live within two miles.

Seven civil lawsuits have been filed so far this year in St. Clair County Circuit Court that name four of the original Monsanto's corporate relatives — Pharmacia, Solutia, Pfizer and Monsanto AG Products. The suits allege environmental and health abuses involving the release of toxic PCBs and dioxins.

Cerro Flow Products also is named as a defendant for allegedly mishandling wastewater at its copper recycling facility in Sauget.

While the government has previously sued for cleanups in Sauget, these cases represent the first major private litigation seeking redress for cancer and other health complications, according to the lawyers involved.

One of those lawyers had previous battles with the companies that led to a big settlement in Alabama.

Bob Peirce, a spokesman for Monsanto, said the new lawsuits are just about money.

"The first lawsuit, which attempts to be certified as a class action, was filed in Illinois by a group of Alabama plaintiffs' lawyers seeking to enrich themselves by making unsupported allegations," Peirce said.

The lawsuits allege that the defendants knowingly "misled the public about the dangerous and hazardous nature" of the substances being released.

Monsanto, the village, was incorporated in 1926 and became a magnet for a variety of industries. At the time, local jurisdictions generally made their own environmental regulations, and the ruling Sauget family was considered business friendly.

Today, Rich Sauget Jr., mayor of the village that was renamed long ago for his grandfather, scoffs at claims his town's big businesses have made people sick.

"I live here and I have no health problems," Sauget said. "Everything seems fine to me."

The companies insist they are not responsible.

They also say that some of them never even had operations in Sauget. That's because the old Monsanto, which was involved in much of the alleged past contamination, spun off most of its chemical business in the last decade, which led to the complicated evolution of the four companies named as defendants.

The family tree began when Monsanto spun off its chemical business into Solutia in 1997. The remnants of old Monsanto merged with Pharmacia in 2000, which is now part of Pfizer. Pharmacia spun off the new Monsanto, an agricultural business based in Creve Coeur, as a separate company in 2002.

Despite the merging, name changing and spinning off, the plaintiffs' lawyers say, all of the companies are responsible.

"For decades, all defendants have known or should have known about the health risks and real property contamination," the suits claim.

For years, the Monsanto facility in Sauget was one of two in the United States that produced polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were chemicals used as coolants. Used in pesticides, electrical transformers and paint, PCBs later were banned as a suspected carcinogen.

The other facility was in Anniston, Ala., where about 20,000 residents reached a nearly $700 million settlement with Solutia, Monsanto and Pharmacia in 2003 over similar claims. In April, however, five Anniston residents who chose to press a case separately took Monsanto to trial and lost when a jury rejected their claims.

James L. "Larry" Wright, a Texas-based lawyer who was involved in the Alabama litigation, said the health consequences in the Sauget area could be worse than in Anniston.

"There's a higher population density than in Alabama," Wright said. "And, they incinerated PCBs (in Sauget) using a cheap process that took the PCBs and made them into something worse."

Monsanto countered with a statement saying: "To believe these claims that a manufacturing plant's historical operations are responsible for plaintiffs' alleged injuries, or potential future injuries, it would also require one to believe that without the manufacturing operations, nobody would ever develop any disease or illness. There is simply no connection between the plaintiffs' alleged injuries and the plants in the Sauget area. We look forward to proving that at trial."

The companies have agreed to pay for cleanup costs in Sauget, but lawyers say there has never been an agreement to compensate residents.

The lawsuits allege Monsanto's Sauget facility produced more PCBs than "any other site in the United States, and perhaps even the free world."

Monsanto said the "chemicals being complained about haven't been made in Sauget for over 30 years."

There are other points of stark disagreement. Monsanto said in its statement that residents "have been solicited through billboard ads, the Internet, and by other means to file suit even though they have no injury."

But Wright said his group of lawyers did not advertise and got most of the clients through word of mouth, largely through churches.

Some see it as surprising that St. Clair County, an area derided by critics as being lawsuit-friendly, hasn't seen major private litigation regarding Sauget until now.

"That has baffled me," Wright said. "I just think the lawyers up there have been focused on other things, particularly asbestos litigation."

The companies, meanwhile, have sought to move the lawsuits into federal court, where they can employ a so-called government contractor defense. They say they are being "sued for actions they took under contract with or direction of the United States and various federal agencies."

"Old Monsanto produced products for the federal government under reasonably precise specifications approved by the federal government, the products conformed to those specifications and the federal government knew at least as much as Old Monsanto about the potential dangers of such products," wrote Bernard J. Ysursa, a Belleville lawyer defending the companies.

Ysursa said in a court document that the federal government urged Monsanto to produce PCBs to help keep "the national power grid in operation during the 1970s." He wrote that a government report in 1972 said the continued use of PCBs in capacitors and transformers was "necessary."

The defendants did get one of the Anniston suits moved to federal court but ended up settling anyway.

Some residents near Sauget say that in the end, industry needs to take responsibility.

"They always come to an area where people are poor and have no voice," said Darius Brown of East St. Louis, whose mother is a plaintiff in the suit. "I just want it to stop, and the people who are sick should be taken care of. We're not looking for handouts, we're looking for change."


  • [Homestead] Monsanto lawsuits article, Gene GeRue, 09/28/2009

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