When a St. Louis courthouse was the venue where three juries issued substantial verdicts this year against Johnson & Johnson and Monsanto Co., it came as little surprise to the defense bar, which has long complained about the standards under which Missouri’s courts admit scientific evidence.
From February to May, three separate juries in the city of St. Louis issued verdicts of $72 million and $55 million in cases involving women who claimed their use of talcum powder caused their ovarian cancer, and $46.5 million for three people claiming their non-Hodgkin lymphoma came from eating foods contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Previous trials in other venues had ended in defense verdicts.
