Poe Hall plaintiffs detail lawsuit against Monsanto

A dozen plaintiffs suing North Carolina State University over alleged health problems linked to their work at the university’s Poe Hall filed this week a separate lawsuit against Monsanto. The complaint blames the private company for including PCBs used in Poe Hall’s building material.

NCSU is also suing Monsanto in connection with Poe Hall. The university closed the building in 2023 after testing revealed high levels of PCBs within the structure.

“This case arises from a deliberate, profit-driven scheme hatched by Monsanto Company (‘Monsanto’) to manufacture, market, and sell polychlorinated biphenyls (‘PCBs’) for use in building materials, despite Monsanto’s longstanding knowledge that PCBs were toxic, persistent, and capable of escaping into the surrounding environment,” according to the latest complaint filed Wednesday in Wake County Superior Court.

The plaintiffs are “faculty, staff, students, and others who spent substantial time inside Poe Hall.” Three plaintiffs died in 2024 or 2025 and are represented by their estates.

NCSU built the seven-story Poe Hall in 1971 to house its education and psychology departments. It “was designed as a high-occupancy building, and for more than fifty years, served as a central hub for teaching, research, tutoring, and community engagement,” according to the complaint.

“At the time Poe Hall was designed and constructed, Monsanto had known for decades that PCBs were toxic to humans and capable of migrating from building materials into indoor air, dust, and surrounding surfaces,” the lawsuit argued. “Monsanto further knew that the resulting human exposures, in addition to causing immediate and acute illness, could result in latent diseases and serious health conditions manifesting years or decades later.”

“Rather than warn purchasers, regulators, or the public, or to curtail its PCB business, Monsanto chose to conceal and downplay these risks, because, as Monsanto noted, there was ‘selfishly too much Monsanto profit to go out’ and it could not ‘afford to lose one dollar of business.’ Thus, Monsanto prioritized corporate profits over human health,” the plaintiffs alleged.

The same plaintiffs filed suit against the university on Jan. 16.

“This case is about deliberate indifference,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote last month. “The Deliberate indifference of a state actor – North Carolina State University (‘NCSU’). As a state actor, NCSU owed the highest duty to those who trusted it most – students, faculty, staff, children and the public – to protect rights solemnly granted to them by the Constitution of the State of North Carolina.”

Poe Hall “was a place where graduate students would dedicate their lives, not to making money, but to teaching the next generation of leaders and innovators,” according to the suit against NCSU. “Poe Hall provided a source of identity and belonging. It was a place where everyone’s blood ran Wolfpack red; many professors taught there for decades.”

“Poe Hall is also a building contaminated from the start with polychlorinated byphenyls (PCBs), some of the most toxic chemicals known to man; so toxic that the Environmental Protection Agency banned their manufacture in 1979 due to their carcinogenic properties. PCBs were everywhere in Poe Hall,” the suit continued.

Both suits seek compensatory damages. The suit against Monsanto also seeks punitive damages.

NCSU filed suit against Monsanto last fall in connection with the Poe Hall shutdown.

The university’s lawsuit, filed in Wake County, alleged that Monsanto “marketed PCB mixtures to the building industry while representing them as non-toxic and non-volatile, despite internal knowledge dating back decades that PCBs are toxic, persistent, and prone to migrate and contaminate indoor environments.” 

The suit seeks hundreds of millions in remediation costs for the building, plus punitive damages and legal fees, while also holding Monsanto liable for any future personal injury claims. NC State already had faced legal challenges over the PCB exposure from students and employees by the time of its Monsanto suit. 

“Monsanto never advised NC State or the public that its PCB products would inevitably leach, leak, off-gas, emit, discharge, and release PCBs, particularly in such a manner that requires remediation despite being used for their ordinary and intended use,” the lawsuit states. “Had Monsanto adequately warned NC State prior to construction of Poe Hall, NC State would not have allowed the use of building materials with PCBs in the construction process.” 

NC State University Chancellor Kevin Howell said in a press release that this is about accountability. 

“Since I joined as chancellor in May, a vacant, contaminated instruction hall that has caused much concern and worry for many has been sitting idle and must be remediated,” write Howell. “This lawsuit is about responsibility and accountability for the cleanup of this building so we can get our students back to learning. In the meantime, along with concerned students, faculty and staff, we eagerly await the results of the pending NIOSH report.” 

Built in 1971 before the federal ban on PCBs, Poe Hall was constructed with materials containing the chemicals. Environmental testing in both 2023 and 2024 found PCB levels in the building’s HVAC system materials that exceeded EPA standards. 

A spokesperson for Monsanto provided the following statement to the Carolina Journal in an email: “The Company believes these claims lack merit and will respond in court in due course. Monsanto discontinued its production of bulk industrial PCBs nearly five decades ago, conducted hundreds of studies on PCB safety, and provided appropriate warnings to its sophisticated industrial customers based on the state-of-the science at the time. Furthermore, any PCB-containing building products used in Poe Hall or other buildings on campus were manufactured, sold and installed by sophisticated third-parties, and maintained by the University.”

Engineers say fixing Poe Hall will require the building to be almost entirely torn down and rebuilt. Rather than wait for the lawsuit to play out, NC State started remediation efforts. Officials say the work is necessary to comply with federal law and ensure the contaminated building does not sit idle in violation of EPA standards.

“Poe Hall plaintiffs detail lawsuit against Monsanto” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.