Washington Supreme Court Reinstates King County Nuclear Verdict®
The Washington Supreme Court restored a $185 million jury verdict against Monsanto’s successor, Pharmacia LLC, in an October 2025 decision.
That ruling reversed an intermediate appellate court, which had vacated the verdict. The massive award stemmed from claims by three public school teachers that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from aging fluorescent light fixtures at the Sky Valley Education Center were to blame for a range of health issues they experienced.
Monsanto phased out its production of PCBs about 50 years ago, but the lighting remained in the school buildings, despite information dis-tributed to school districts by the EPA and public health organizations for decades urging their removal. The verdict included $50 million in compensatory damages and $135 million in punitive damages ($45 million to each teacher).
Pick-and-Choose Law Shopping
To reach this extraordinary result, the trial court engaged in blatant “law shopping.” Washington’s statute of repose for product liability actions generally precludes lawsuits alleging a product is defective more than 12 years after it is delivered. Washington’s Product Liability Act also does not authorize punitive damage awards.
To get around these obstacles, the trial court made the extraordinary finding that Missouri, the state where the manufacturer is headquartered, had a greater interest in lawsuits brought by teachers in King County than Washington, and, for that reason, the court applied aspects of Missouri law that favored the plaintiffs.
Before the Washington Supreme Court, the company’s lawyers argued that it had been “subjected to the harshest aspects of each state’s regime in this legal Frankenstein that didn’t reflect either state’s policy.”
The Washington Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority in Erickson v. Pharmacia found that, even though the plaintiffs’ claims were brought under the Washington Product Liability Act, the trial court had properly applied Missouri law to wipe out the defendant’s statute of repose defense and allow a punitive damage award.
The court also reinstated the $135 million punitive damage award, even though that award was premised upon a manufacturer having a duty to warn about product hazards that are discovered only after the sale of a product. While that post-sale duty to warn is recognized in Washington, it is not in Missouri (and many other states). Instead, the majority ruled that “the jury was not required to identify the specific theories of liability recognized by Missouri law that supported an award of punitive damages.”
In sum, the Washington Supreme Court’s decision applied a mishmash of laws to favor the plaintiffs: Washington’s product liability law, including its post-sale duty to warn, but not Washington’s statute of repose combined with Missouri’s punitive damages law.
Junk Science
This decision also spotlights the critical need for courts to enforce rigorous standards for scientific evidence, especially in cases that rely on speculative models to establish causation.
During the trial, an expert witness for the plaintiffs relied on a novel method to estimate historical PCB concentrations at the educational center. Although the intermediate appellate court found that this approach was unreliable, the Washington Supreme Court found the trial court properly admitted the testimony.
The expert had used a carpet sample from the school to back-calculate the historic concentration of PCBs in the air. He conceded, however, that no one had conducted this reverse experiment, including any scientist or the EPA. The intermediate appellate court ruled that the trial court should have excluded this testimony because the expert’s approach was “novel,” “not generally accepted in the scientific community,” not used by other scientists, and not supported by “any peer-reviewed literature.” Yet, the Washington Supreme Court shirked its responsibility to ensure that expert testimony is “generally accepted in the relevant scientific community and capable of producing reliable results,” as required by state law. Despite the expert’s admission that no one else had used carpet samples to estimate PCBs in the air, the majority agreed with the trial court that it was “generally accepted.” The majority also summarily found that the defendant’s objections to the testimony went “to the weight of his testimony, not its admissibility,” a lax approach that federal courts have rejected.
Dissent
Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, joined by two other justices, dissented. The trio concluded that the majority had disregarded a “wealth of evidence” indicating that the legislature intended that the Washington Product Liability Act governs all claims bought under it, including issues of repose and punitive damages. Rather, the dissent found that the majority had applied its “policy preferences when there’s a state statute right on point.” The dissenters rejected “picking and choosing elements from different states’ laws” or taking a “smorgasbord approach” that benefits the party picking and choosing.
In a statement to Law360 following the decision, Monsanto indicated that it believes that the court’s rulings “unlawfully discriminate against out-of-state companies doing business in Washington” and violate the U.S. Constitution.
Two months before the ruling, Monsanto announced a settlement with other plaintiffs in the Sky Valley Education Center litigation, resolving all but nine related lawsuits. The company faced verdicts totaling more than $1 billion related to the center, following 10 trials combining the claims of 80 people. The October 2025 case was the first appeal to reach the Washington Supreme Court.
A newcomer to the list in 2024, King County courts are known for their plaintiff-friendly rulings and liability-expanding approach. The courts have become a hub for novel climate lawsuits and have broadened liability for defendants in asbestos cases. Washington residents are feeling the financial impact — paying the second-highest “tort tax” in the nation. Lawsuit abuse plaguing the court system is creating excessive litigation costs that stifle job creation and hinder economic growth across the state.
This year, the Judicial Hellholes® designation has expanded to cover the Washington Supreme Court after it failed to rein in King County courts and reinstated an outrageous nuclear verdict® in a case riddled with junk science. The high court selectively applied laws of other states to permit damages that typically are not available in Washington courts.
In May 2025, the Washington Supreme Court made it easier for plaintiffs to sue employers for work-related latent injuries, overruling precedent.
Typically, individuals who experience work-related injuries can seek recovery through the workers’ compensation system and cannot bring lawsuits against their employers. That was the case in Washington, which, in 1911, enacted the Industrial Insurance Act. That law, like other workers’ compensation laws, was born out of a compromise between workers and employers to create a no-fault compensation system for occupational injuries. In exchange for guaranteed benefits regardless of fault, employees relinquished the right to sue their employers for workplace injuries. The Act, similar to other state laws, provides that employers are not subject to tort liability unless they act with “
Earlier this year, plaintiffs’ lawyers filed a 
