Twelve years after filing suits against DuPont for Benlate-related birth defects, two families have won confidential payouts. The families had alleged that the fungicide, which is no longer on the market, caused birth defects in their children.
In 1997 the two families, together with four families from the UK, filed a suit against DuPont. One of the families had a son who died in 1998 at the age of seven, and that case went to the US Supreme Court on three separate occasions. Finally, in May 2007, DuPont agreed a tentative settlement of $9 million for 32 families.
To date, DuPont has paid more than $2.3 billion in litigation costs related to Benlate lawsuits. And in 2000 two Texas fruit companies received more than $100 million for damages caused to their orchards by DuPont's Benlate dust.
