BELLEVILLE – St. Clair County Associate Judge Kevin Hoerner entered nine straight orders in favor of paraquat plaintiffs in preparation for a trial he would have started Monday, May 10.
The parties asked for a delay over the weekend, and Hoerner granted it.
In rulings from May 3 to May 6, he limited testimony of 17 defense experts and entirely excluded two.
He denied all defense motions for limits on testimony.
Farmers Carroll Rowan, Jerry Mills, Freemon Schmidt, and Ronald Niebrugge claim they suffer Parkinson’s disease from using paraquat to control weeds.
They seek damages from Syngenta Crop Protection and Growmark cooperative as suppliers, and Chevron USA as manufacturer.
Hoerner set the case for St. Clair County’s first jury trial in 14 months.
In April, plaintiff counsel Stephen Tillery of St. Louis dismissed all claims except consumer fraud, which doesn’t require a jury trial.
Defendants demanded a jury and Hoerner denied it.
On May 3, he barred defense experts Keith Matthews, William Jordan, and Joseph Rodricks from expressing legal conclusions and statutory interpretations.
They would have testified that defendants complied with federal law and Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
“Illinois courts have consistently held that experts may not offer opinions on purely legal issues,” Hoerner wrote.
He found defendants contended that they would testify about non legal issues such as the regulatory landscape or labeling requirements.
“The court is skeptical that this information would assist the court,” he wrote.
He limited witnesses that defendants didn’t timely disclose as experts.
He found they could testify but not about toxicology, chemical structure, exposure assessments, or studies of health and safety.
He denied a motion from Syngenta to exclude plaintiff expert William Mobley, identifying him as a distinguished professor of neuroscience.
He found Mobley would testify about what a scientist would have understood at any given point in time based on internal studies and independent research.
“Defendants will have the opportunity to flush out any infirmities in Dr. Mobley’s testimony and opinions through cross examination,” he wrote.
He denied a motion from Syngenta to exclude testimony from plaintiff expert David Gibson about its market value.
The testimony would relate to a punitive damage claim that Hoerner allowed.
He quoted from Gibson’s report that Syngenta’s net worth ranged from $4.1 billion to $8.4 billion between 2015 and 2019.
He found Gibson reported that Chem China paid $43 billion for Syngenta in 2017.
He denied a motion from all defendants to exclude opinions of experts who rely on information they didn’t author.
He wrote that he’d carefully consider the scope of their testimony and any specific objections at trial.
He denied a motion from Syngenta to keep rebuttal experts Linda Birnbaum and Terrence from testifying beyond rebuttal.
He wrote that the court has discretion to admit evidence in rebuttal even where it’s more properly presented in a plaintiff’s case in chief.
He denied a motion from Syngenta to exclude public opinion expert David Michaels, rejecting a claim that Michaels would act as Tillery’s mouthpiece.
“One of the primary issues in this case is whether defendants attempted to manipulate public opinion on the science to obfuscate the truth about the alleged connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease,” he wrote.
He found Michaels spent a large part of his career studying and publishing on the sort of corporate strategies defendants were alleged to have employed.
On May 6, he barred 11 defense experts from testifying about EPA, its statutory framework, and its past and current positions on Parkinson’s disease.
“EPA’s decision making and regulatory processes are simply not relevant to the issues presented by this state law action,” he wrote.
He didn’t bar either side from introducing scientific facts or data EPA generated.
He excluded the whole testimony of defense experts William Johnson and David Sunding, who would have testified about paraquat’s benefits.
Hoerner found the testimony “will not make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of plaintiffs’ Illinois Consumer Fraud Act claims more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”
“The proffered testimony concerns paraquat as a product, not defendants’ trade practices.”
In the same order he restricted defense expert Bryan Young, a weed scientist.
“While some background testimony on paraquat may be appropriate, defendants shall not seek to elicit evidence concerning weed science or the alleged benefits of paraquat,” he wrote.
His order vacating the trial date stated he’d set a date by further order.