Seattle jury fines Bayer

Bayer AG was ordered to pay $857 million to former students and parent volunteers at a Seattle-area school who blamed exposure to the company’s hazardous chemicals at the facility for causing brain damage and other ailments.

A jury in Washington state on Monday found that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, at the school weren’t “reasonably safe” and awarded $73 million in compensatory damages and $784 million in punitive damages to two parents who volunteered at Sky Valley Education Center along with five former students, according to court filings.

The decision marks the eighth time Washington state juries have found that students, teachers and parents who spent time in the facility were harmed by exposure to PCBs used in fluorescent light fixtures.

Jurors have awarded a total of more than $1.5 billion in damages in those cases, which Bayer is appealing.

U.S. Bank fined $36 million

U.S. Bancorp will pay $36 million to settle regulators’ claims that it improperly kept unemployed Americans from easily accessing benefits through assistance programs at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Tuesday that fraud concerns prompted the lender in 2020 to freeze tens of thousands of benefit accounts that it was contracted to fill with government unemployment funds.

The bank, however, lacked a clear process for people whose accounts had been frozen to prove their identities and use the prepaid assistance cards, according to the watchdog.

U.S. Bank, as the firm’s bank subsidiary is known, will pay around $21 million to settle the CFPB case, with $5.7 million going to impacted consumers and $15 million as a penalty.

From wire reports

Separately, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said U.S. Bank violated its rules and would pay a $15 million penalty.