By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Fifteen US states sued agrichemicals company Corteva on Thursday, alleging that the spinoff of its seed and genetics business into Vylor was designed to shield the company’s best assets from tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities tied to PFAS “forever chemicals” that have polluted the environment.
Corteva completed the Vylor spinoff into a separate publicly traded company on Thursday.
The lawsuit, filed in Indiana state court by a bipartisan group of state attorneys general and the territory of Guam, alleges that Vylor received the “crown jewels” of Corteva’s business without assuming any responsibility for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination.
Corteva, which was formed from a corporate merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont, has been named in thousands of lawsuits over DuPont’s decades-long production and sale of PFAS-containing chemicals. The lawsuits allege that PFAS have polluted the environment and exposed millions of Americans to potential health risks.
Corteva said in September that the states’ PFAS claims are “speculative and unproven,” adding that Corteva itself never made or sold PFAS products.
When Corteva was spun off as an independent company from DuPont, it inherited some responsibility for DuPont’s PFAS liabilities.
The states allege that the Vylor spinoff transferred one of Corteva’s most profitable businesses to a new company while leaving PFAS liabilities behind, amounting to an effort to defraud creditors pursuing claims against former DuPont entities.
“Companies cannot simply move valuable assets out of reach and leave states, communities and taxpayers to deal with the liabilities left behind,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said Thursday.
California previously tried to block the Vylor spinoff through a court filing in a separate federal court case over PFAS claims. A federal judge in South Carolina on Wednesday rejected California’s emergency request to stop the spinoff from going forward.
After the spinoff, Corteva said it will focus on protecting crops from weeds, pests, and diseases, while Vylor takes on the seed business.
Vylor’s CEO Chuck Magro said in a Thursday statement that the company’s goal is to “reimagine agriculture,” tackling challenges like food security and energy security while targeting net sales of $11.2 billion to $11.9 billion by 2029.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Nia Williams, Mark Porter and Alexia Garamfalvi)
Comments