$82 Million Verdict Against Monsanto for PCB Exposure at the Sky Valley Education Center

The Sky Valley Education Center is a public K-12 program in Monroe, Washington, housed in an aging former school building. Its fluorescent light fixtures and building caulk contained polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, industrial chemicals Monsanto manufactured for decades before United States production ended in the 1970s. Teachers, students, and parents who spent time in the building later sued Monsanto's successor entities, alleging the chemicals leaked into the classrooms and made them sick.

Stacy Mullen-Deland taught Spanish at Sky Valley, and her family spent four years at the school between 2011 and 2015. During that period the family of four developed a range of neurological and other health problems that they attributed to PCB exposure in the building. They brought product liability claims against Monsanto, by then held by Pharmacia and owned by Bayer, alleging the company sold a defective product and failed to warn about its dangers.

Their case became the sixth Sky Valley trial to reach a jury. Trial began in King County Superior Court in late October 2022, with Michael Wampold and Tomas Gahan of Peterson Wampold Rosato Feldman Luna trying the case alongside co-counsel from Friedman Rubin. Shook Hardy and Bacon defended Monsanto. Over roughly seven weeks the jury heard evidence on how PCBs escaped from light ballasts and caulk, what Monsanto knew about the chemicals' hazards, and the family's injuries.

After four days of deliberations, the jury returned its verdict in December 2022. It found that Monsanto produced a defective product and failed to warn of its hazards, and it awarded $82 million to one member of the family: $20.5 million in compensatory damages and $61.5 million in punitive damages. The jury did not award damages to the other three plaintiffs. The firm described the result as the largest verdict in United States history against Monsanto for an individual plaintiff in any PCB case.

Bayer said it would pursue post-trial motions and appeals, noting the jury had rejected the claims of three of the four plaintiffs, and Law360 later reported that Monsanto pressed the Washington Court of Appeals to set the verdict aside. The wider Sky Valley litigation has since shifted toward resolution. In August 2025 Monsanto announced agreements in principle to settle the claims of more than 200 Sky Valley plaintiffs, on confidential terms, while excluding the earlier adverse jury verdicts already on appeal. In October 2025 the Washington Supreme Court reinstated the $185 million Erickson verdict, the first Sky Valley trial win, after an appellate reversal, a ruling plaintiffs' counsel said bears directly on the other Sky Valley judgments still under review. As of the most recent public reporting, the Mullen-Deland verdict remains among the appealed Sky Valley judgments excluded from those settlements, with no final appellate decision announced in the case.