Aimee Wagstaff

Career

As a native Kansan, Aimee Wagstaff was raised riding horses and chasing cattle on the family's working ranch. Spending weekends in central Kansas, without cell towers or television, remains one of her favorite childhood memories. After graduating from college, Aimee moved west and now enjoys the sunny days and chilly nights of Boulder, Colorado.

Aimee has dedicated the last decade of her career holding powerful agrochemical companies accountable for the harm they cause farmers and everyday users. While some chemicals are useful or necessary, several are not. The story is shockingly predictable and similar between most of the companies:

Put profits over safety.

Make billions of dollars.

Deny. Deny. Deny any wrongdoing.

Hire fancy lawyers to defend bad conduct.

It's now up to juries across America to make the pattern stop.

Roundup: In her first case against the agrochemical giants, Aimee took on Monsanto. Her law firm filed one of the first Roundup cases in 2016 and for almost a decade she served as national co-lead counsel of all federal cases. To date, there has only been one federal trial against Monsanto alleging exposure to Roundup can cause cancer - Hardeman v. Monsanto. She served as lead trial counsel in the Hardeman case and after a hard-fought month-long trial, the jury unanimously returned a verdict for Mr. Hardeman in the amount of $80,267,634.10. Since that verdict, Monsanto has paid almost fifteen billion dollars to resolve similar claims, including over a billion dollars for Aimee's clients.

Paraquat: Now, Aimee is spending most of her professional time litigating against Syngenta and Chevron over their billion-dollar blockbuster chemical: Paraquat. Even a brief search of paraquat illuminates the scary dark side of the chemical. It is one of the most dangerous chemicals ever brought to market. While a spoonful of paraquat will actually make your heart stop, inhaling its fumes or getting it on your skin will cause the chemical to make its way to your brain (through the nasal passage or through your blood). Once in the brain, massive and debilitating damage happens and eventually, most are diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. There is no cure for Parkinson's Disease, it gets worse with time, until, eventually, you become a hostage inside your own body. Maybe that is why there is a 100% ban on paraquat use in both China (Syngenta is a Chinese company) and Switzerland (Syngenta's headquarters are in Switzerland). It sure says a lot that Syngenta can't sell it in its home country or where it is headquartered. The entire European Union has also banned paraquat, as well as several other countries. Paraquat is a terribly dangerous chemical. The United States EPA, which registers paraquat in the United States, does not conduct its own studies and instead relies only on information from the companies selling paraquat to determine the registration status. It's the classic “garbage in,” “garbage out” example.

Confidential internal documents, exposed for the first time in this litigation, show that Syngenta and Chevron have known that Paraquat accumulates in the brain since the early 1960s, and that the chemical giants just didn't care. Presumably, they didn't care because they were making an obscene amount of money selling paraquat. Several of those secret internal documents were made public in the “Paraquat Papers,” found here. See also this video.

Wagstaff Law Firm is not currently litigating this case in federal court. However, last year a federal judge excluded one of the Plaintiffs' paraquat experts on a methodology flaw (nothing related to the causation science) and provided the same lawyers an opportunity to “redo” the opinion with a new expert. Instead of allowing that, Syngenta and Chevron announced a settlement of the federal lawsuits that far exceeds several billions of dollars. While a good start, it is not enough. Here is an article on the federal settlement.

Using different experts, Aimee and her team are mainly litigating in Pennsylvania state court and Aimee is set to be lead trial counsel in the first paraquat case (nationwide) in early 2026.

Advancement of Women in the Law: One of Aimee's proudest achievements and her “professional teenager” is her organization, “Women En Mass” (WEM). In 2013, Aimee founded and organized WEM's inaugural retreat in Aspen, Colorado. Since then, there has been no looking back. It's an amazing group of the brightest and most talented lawyers America has to offer, and we all just happen to be women. If you are interested in attending, check out WEM's website or contact Aimee directly.

In 2015, Aimee made MDL history when the Honorable Judge Kathryn H. Vratil appointed her to serve as Co-Lead counsel of the first ever majority women MDL plaintiffs' steering committee (PSC) – MDL 2652: In Re: Ethicon, Inc., Power Morcellator Products Liability Litigation, situated in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. It's hard to believe that it took until 2015 for this milestone to happen. The morcellator litigation involved women and their families all over the United States who have been diagnosed with devastating and permanent injuries following the use of Ethicon's power morcellator during a fibroid removal or hysterectomy surgery. That MDL was also historic for its pace of resolution, within a year.

Aimee's Legal Admissions: Although Aimee is licensed to practice in California, Colorado, Missouri, and Pennsylvania, she mainly resides in Boulder, Colorado. Recently, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association (“CTLA”) presented Aimee with the “Access to Justice” award, which honors the “perseverance, courage and character shown over and over again in cases of extraordinary circumstances.”

Aimee earned her undergraduate degree in Marine Science and Communications from the University of San Diego, where she played on the women's soccer team.