$100 Million Verdict Against Pharmacia for PCB Exposure at Sky Valley Education Center
After trial: The award covers four plaintiffs. Pharmacia has appealed the Sky Valley verdicts as a group, and Bayer's August 2025 settlement of more than 200 Sky Valley claims expressly excluded the verdicts already on appeal.
Won by Friedman Rubin.
A King County jury awarded $100 million to four plaintiffs who suffered neurological, hormonal, and cancer-related illnesses after years of exposure to PCBs from defective fluorescent light fixtures at a Monroe, Washington school.
What happened
Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington, operated for years with fluorescent light ballasts and caulking that contained polychlorinated biphenyls, a class of industrial chemicals Monsanto manufactured for decades under the trade name Aroclor. When the ballasts aged and cracked, PCBs off-gassed into classrooms. Students, teachers, and staff breathed and ingested them year after year.
More than 200 people connected to the school eventually brought claims, alleging the exposure caused a range of serious conditions including neurological impairment, thyroid dysfunction, endocrine disruption, and cancer. Pharmacia LLC, the Monsanto corporate spinoff that inherited liability for the PCB product line, has faced a succession of trials in King County over the Sky Valley contamination.
The Rose case, filed as Gunnar L.G. Rose et al. v. Pharmacia LLC (No. 87281-8), placed fifteen plaintiffs before a King County jury beginning in October 2024. Henry Jones, Richard Friedman, and colleagues at Friedman Rubin PLLP tried the case alongside attorneys from Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala and Trial Lawyers for Justice. The plaintiff teams presented blood, air, and tissue testing to show elevated PCB levels in their clients, and argued that Pharmacia had known of the health risks for decades while marketing the chemicals as safe and suppressing contrary evidence.
The jury agreed on both counts for four of the fifteen plaintiffs, finding that Pharmacia supplied an unsafe and defectively designed product and had intentionally misrepresented facts or concealed information about PCB hazards. On January 14, 2025, after a trial that ran from October, the jury returned a verdict of $25 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages, totaling $100 million. The remaining eleven plaintiffs did not prevail. Pharmacia announced plans to pursue post-trial motions and an appeal.
The verdict added to more than $1.1 billion in prior losses Pharmacia faced from earlier Sky Valley trials, and was one of several hundred-million-dollar results in the litigation series.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Courtroom View Network: Jury Awards $100M in Monsanto PCB Forever Chemical Exposure Trial (Jan. 2025)·Archived copy
- 2.Top Class Actions: Monsanto to Pay $100M in PCB Exposure Verdict (2025)·Archived copy
- 3.KIRO 7 News Seattle: Jury Orders Company to Pay $100 Million for Illnesses Linked to Monroe School (Jan. 2025)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Friedman Rubin
All Friedman Rubin proven verdicts →A King County jury awarded $857 million in December 2023 to seven people, five former students and two parent volunteers, who said they were sickened by PCBs leaking from light fixtures at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. The verdict included $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages against Monsanto and its successor Pharmacia. In April 2024 a King County judge cut the punitive award to $365 million under Missouri's statutory cap on punitive damages, reducing the total to $438 million. Monsanto appealed, and Bayer said in February 2026 that Monsanto had settled the remaining Sky Valley jury verdicts on confidential terms, so what was ultimately paid is not public.
A King County jury awarded $275 million to thirteen Sky Valley Education Center students and families who suffered neurological injuries from PCB-contaminated light fixtures manufactured by Monsanto.
A King County jury awarded three Monroe, Washington teachers $185 million after finding that PCBs manufactured by Monsanto leached from fluorescent light ballasts at their school and caused permanent neurological injuries.
A Clark County jury awarded retired Air Force veteran Michael Washington and his wife Josephine $104 million after finding that propofol manufacturers Teva Parenteral Medicines and Baxter Healthcare knowingly supplied oversized anesthetic vials that clinics routinely reused, spreading hepatitis C to patients.
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