Monsanto legal cases Monsanto legal cases Monsanto has been involved in several high-profile lawsuits, as both plaintiff and defendant. It has been defendant in a number of lawsuits over health and environmental issues related to its products. Monsanto has also made frequent use of the courts to defend its patents, particularly in the area of agricultural biotechnology, as have other companies in the field, such as Dupont Pioneer and Syngenta. Monsanto was one of the first companies to apply the biotechnology industry business model to agriculture, using techniques developed by Genentech and other biotech drug companies in the late 1970s in California. In
Monsanto legal cases that protective procedures needed to be implemented. In 2003, Monsanto and Solutia Inc., a Monsanto corporate spin-off, reached a $700 million settlement with the residents of West Anniston, Alabama who had been affected by the manufacturing and dumping of PCBs. In a trial lasting six weeks, the jury found that "Monsanto had engaged in outrageous behavior, and held the corporations and its corporate successors liable on all six counts it considered - including negligence, nuisance, wantonness and suppression of the truth." In 2014, the Los Angeles Superior Court found that Monsanto was not liable for cancers claimed to be from