Monsanto and Solutia Pay $700 Million to Settle Decades of PCB Poisoning in Anniston, Alabama

From 1929 through 1971, Monsanto operated a plant on the south side of Anniston, Alabama, that produced polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a class of industrial chemicals later classified by the EPA as probable human carcinogens. For most of those four decades, the company deposited PCB-laden waste into open-pit landfills on company property and discharged contaminated water into Snow Creek, which ran through a predominantly Black residential neighborhood. Residents noticed a foul smell, oily films on creek water, and yellowing on surfaces near the plant. They were not told what was causing it.

Internal Monsanto documents that surfaced in litigation showed the company had known as early as 1937 that the chemicals were harmful to workers, and had continued production while conducting its own studies on exposed fish and local residents without disclosing the results. The federal government banned PCBs in 1979, eight years after Monsanto stopped making them. By then, PCB concentrations in Snow Creek and surrounding soil were among the highest ever recorded in a residential area in the United States.

In 2001, two sets of plaintiffs filed parallel suits. Abernathy v. Monsanto was filed in Calhoun County Circuit Court as a state case. Tolbert v. Monsanto was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Together the cases covered more than 21,000 plaintiffs who alleged personal injury, property damage, and medical monitoring needs from decades of PCB exposure. Monsanto had spun off its chemical operations to Solutia Inc. in 1997, and both companies were named as defendants. Pharmacia, the successor to original Monsanto, was also named.

Jere Beasley and Rhon Jones of Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis and Miles, P.C. in Montgomery served as plaintiffs' counsel in the litigation alongside other firms, including co-counsel Johnnie Cochran. On August 20, 2003, the parties reached a global settlement before both courts. Monsanto paid $390 million, Solutia contributed $50 million, and the remaining $160 million came from the companies' commercial insurance policies, bringing the cash fund to $600 million for plaintiff compensation. On top of the cash fund, the companies committed to community health programs, including a medical clinic, health screenings, and a prescription drug benefit for low-income residents, along with a foundation to support special-education needs for area children. They also agreed to court-supervised remediation of contaminated residential areas at an estimated additional cost of more than $51 million. Counting the cash fund together with the health programs and remediation, the resolution was reported as a roughly $700 million settlement. At the time, it was the largest PCB contamination settlement in U.S. history.

Solutia filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2003, four months after the settlement was signed, citing the weight of ongoing environmental liabilities. The settlement funds had already been transferred before the bankruptcy filing.