The attorney who landed a $93 million settlement in a suit over the herbicide Roundup has similarly sued Dow Chemical and Corteva over a pesticide called Chlorpyrifos, according to media reports.
Attorney Stuart Calwell filed the complaint on behalf of plaintiff parents who allege their children are experiencing side effects from exposure to the chemical, including neurological damage.
“Ninety-three million dollars is a very small amount when you're looking at something as big as a potentially nationwide pesticide regulation,” said Robert Michaels, a professor of economics at California State University-Fullerton. “Maybe he didn’t have much of a case or maybe the actual damage was very small and that was the best that they could do or Monsanto may have settled realizing there’s no point in fighting over something as small as this particularly when the outcome could be precedential.”
The Pasadena Star-News reported that, like the state of New York, California prohibited selling the bug killer last year.
“It's entirely possible that it's not competitive relative to alternatives or it’s possible that they found additional information and they now know that there are dangers in this, which hadn't been known,” Michaels told the Southern California Record. “It was apparently marketed all over the country.”
Last year, Calwell filed a similar lawsuit in the Superior Court of Kings County on behalf of farmworkers in association with local counsel Patricia N. Syverson. Syverson is with the Bonnet Fairbourn Friedman & Balint law firm in San Diego.
“Beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s and 2000s, Dow engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to hide the dangers of chlorpyrifos from its customers and the general public,” the Oct. 27, 2020 complaint states. “At best, this conduct could be characterized as the negligent failure to test for certain specific harms or to appreciate and take appropriate measures to protect from those harms associated with chlorpyrifos.”
The lawsuit further claims that chlorpyrifos becomes a neurotoxin if exposed to chlorine-treated water or sunlight, which is more dangerous than chlorpyrifos.
“Potentially, there are zillions of lawsuits like these,” Michaels said. “What's really interesting is that most of them settle. The vast majority of tort cases like these simply settle because you can't trust the court. There are people on both sides who have a great deal at stake. Would you put this into the hands of a jury of 12 strangers who are there because they got a notice in the mail that they had to report for jury duty? No. They settle.”