TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--The Florida Supreme Court has reinstated a $4 million jury verdict against E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. in which the jury concluded that a pregnant woman's exposure to the company's Benlate DF fungicide caused her to give birth to a child with no eyes.
In 1996 the Dade County jury ordered Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont to pay Donna and Juan Castillo the award after Ms. Castillo claimed that, when she was seven weeks pregnant in 1989, she was sprayed with a heavy dose of Benlate as she walked past a Florida tomato farm. She charged that her exposure to the fungicide caused microphthalmia, a rare birth defect involving severely underdeveloped eyes, in her unborn son, John.
In its 3-2 decision, the Florida Supreme Court disagreed with a 1999 appeals court decision that had vacated the judgment on the grounds that the expert testimony was not admissible.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court concluded that the expert testimony offered by the Castillos was "properly admitted."
DuPont and its co-defendant, the farm owner, had argued that the Castillos' experts failed to use epidemiological studies. The Supreme Court said, though, that their objections "are to the conclusions the Castillos' experts reached, not the methodology itself." The court also said that "there was enough direct evidence that Ms. Castillo was exposed to Benlate to support the jury's verdict against DuPont."
DuPont said it is disappointed by the decision. "In March of 2002, a West Virginia federal United States District Court rejected the same expert's methodology and excluded their experts from testifying in a similar Benlate eye defect case," the company said in a statement, noting that that decision is on appeal.
Dupont added that it "knows of no credible science to support these claims and will continue to defend the product in ongoing Delaware litigation."
DuPont has paid more than $1 billion since the early 1990s to settle claims that contaminated Benlate killed crops.
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