Word: spills
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...issue is more than $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages claimed by 65 plaintiffs, following a train wreck in Sturgeon, Mo., on the night of Jan. 10, 1979. A tank car on a Norfolk & Western freight broke a coupling and derailed, spilling 19,000 gallons of orthochlorophenol. Sturgeon was evacuated for two days while the spill was cleaned up. Then Monsanto announced that the spilled chemical contained a minute amount of dioxin, the type designated as 2,3,7,8-TCDD and described as the most toxic synthetic chemical known to man. A mere thimbleful was involved. But because...
Named for its lead plaintiff, a retired schoolteacher, the case was originally filed in Boone County, Mo., where the spill occurred. But Carr refiled it, over Monsanto's objection, in St. Clair County, Ill., where the chemical was made. He was well aware that juries have been generous there. Complains Monsanto Lawyer David Snively: "St. Clair is renowned as a plaintiff's paradise...
Over another Monsanto objection, Carr got all the spill cases consolidated, so the proceedings involved 65 plaintiffs, each with multiple medical complaints from alleged dioxin exposure. More than 80,000 pages of testimony from 167 witnesses have been transcribed so far. The case file is already five feet thick. Over 6,000 exhibits have been entered into evidence...
...symptom boards, outlining alleged dioxin-related plaintiff ills ranging from headaches and high blood pressure to depression and decreased sexual desire. Carr concedes that "none of my clients is falling down sick." But the core of his case concerns possible future cancer developing from dioxin exposure in the 1979 spill...
...plaintiffs, contending the ills the dots represent could be dioxin-related. Monsanto's rebuttal expert, Dr. James R. Webster, chief of medicine at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital, is now in the process of disputing Dr. Carnow, dot by dot, testifying that all alleged ills either predated the spill or could have been caused by something other than dioxin. By the time he has finished, every red dot will be crossed out, and the jury will then have to decide whether any dot is legitimate...