Tillery
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
A bench trial that had been set to start Monday in St. Clair County Associate Judge Kevin Hoerner s court on claims that weed killer paraquat caused four plaintiffs to suffer Parkinson’s disease has been continued to June 1.
While a motion for continuance and the order granting it are not yet posted on the court docket, Courtroom View Network (CVN) reported over the weekend that the case had been reset.
Defendant manufacturer Syngenta released a statement Monday afternoon saying the court and the parties have agreed to postpone the start of the trial to accommodate scheduling and logistical issues.
Tillery
BELLEVILLE – Stephen Tillery, ready for trial on a claim that weed killer paraquat caused four plaintiffs to suffer Parkinson’s disease, won the biggest judgment ever in an American trial and lost it at the Illinois Supreme Court.
In 2003, after a bench trial, late Madison County judge Nicholas Byron awarded more than $10 billion to a class of cigarette smokers Tillery represented.
The few American cases with higher judgments, such as state tobacco litigation in the 1990s and Deepwater Horizon explosion suits, ended in settlement.
Tillery retreated from the field of class actions after the state Supreme Court and Congress restricted them, though he has returned as ambitious as ever.
Hoerner
BELLEVILLE – “Studies have shown,” say lawyers on television linking weed killer paraquat to Parkinson’s disease. But doctors have hunted for that link a long time without finding it.
Doctors who carried out an immense project to resolve the mystery once and for all concluded 10 years ago that it needed further research.
They found some evidence of a link between Parkinson’s and weed killer rotenone, diagnosing the disease 2.5 times as often among users.
Online advocates pull that statistic from the study and pin it on paraquat.
Two studies showed a possible link between Parkinson’s disease and combinations of herbicide exposures and other causes.
Hoerner
BELLEVILLE – Virus concerns caused St. Clair County Associate Judge Kevin Hoerner to delay trial on claims that weed killer paraquat caused Parkinson’s disease, for 28 days.
On March 23, he granted a motion of defendants Syngenta, Chevron, and Growmark to continue an April 12 trial date.
He has set it to start May 10.
No judge has held trial in St. Clair County for more than a year.
Defendants moved to stay the paraquat trial or continue it on March 17, warning that trials act as super spreaders of the virus.
Attorney Joseph Orlet of Clayton, Mo. wrote that criminal jury trials are on hold and even relatively minor civil jury trials are on hold.