Lawyers from the firms Baron & Budd, Grant & Eisenhofer and Gordon, Wolf, and Carney are working with city attorneys on the case. The firms are fronting the litigation costs and are working on contingency, meaning the city would only pay them if it wins damages, said Susan Sangree, director of affirmative litigation for the city law department.
Baltimore is the first US east coast city to file a lawsuit against Monsanto for the cleanup of toxic chemical polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The suit also named former Monsanto divisions Solutia and Pharmacia, and claimed the firms continued to use PCBs, which were banned in 1979, knowing since 1937 that they were harmful to humans and animals, and would never break down. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto last year for $66bn, said the complaint was "without merit" because they stopped producing PCBs over 40 years ago. In an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Bayer executive vice-president Bernd Lange said: "We are not aware of any evidence whatsoever that we used these chemicals illegally.