Monsanto House of Lords, stated that all information relating to the matter would be "kept secret". During the 24 months prior to the 1997 British election Monsanto representatives had 22 meetings at the departments of Agriculture and the Environment. Stanley Greenberg, an election advisor to Tony Blair, later worked as a Monsanto consultant. Former Labour spokesperson David Hill, became Monsanto's media adviser at the lobbying firm Bell Pottinger. The Labour government was challenged in Parliament about "trips, facilities, gifts and other offerings of financial value provided by Monsanto to civil servants", but only acknowledged that Department of Trade and Industry had
Monsanto legal cases where a farmer was found to be willfully infringing Monsanto's patent, the damages awarded to Monsanto were found to be non-dischargeable in the farmer’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy, as they "fell within the Bankruptcy Act’s exception for willful and malicious injuries." Monsanto has been criticized for a mistaken lawsuit. In 2002, Monsanto mistakenly sued Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri for patent violation. Rinehart was not a farmer or seed dealer, but sharecropped land with his brother and nephew, who were violating the patent. Monsanto dropped the lawsuit against him when it discovered the mistake. It did not apologize for the mistake