A Californian man who was awarded $75 million in punitive damages in a bellwether trial over Bayer AG's weedkiller Roundup, said that the verdict shouldn't have been reduced as the company refused to test its weedkiller for cancer risks.
Initially, a jury of five women and one man found Monsanto liable for the plaintiff's allegations that decades of exposure caused him non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The plaintiff received $200,967 in economic damages, approximately $5 million in future and past non-economic damages, and $75 million in punitive damages.
In July, Judge Chhabria after finding the punitive damages verdict "constitutionally impermissible," reduced the $80 million jury verdict to $25 million.
The plaintiff, in his arguments, claimed that his claims were equivalent to the law's requirements, which states that a pesticide can be found misbranded if its label leaves out necessary warnings, which Roundup's label did. The claims were refuted by the defendant stating the claims are barred by federal law under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.
IARC, considered to be the apex in the field of cancer research, classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” According to IARC, Roundup is made up of other ingredients that are toxic in themselves, and are also known to increase the toxicity of glyphosate. Monsanto has known this for many years but still refuses to study the link between cancer and Roundup.
Monsanto has a brief history of legal troubles and Glyphosate is just another herbicide of the company to attract lawsuits. Plaintiffs across the U.S. have filed numerous lawsuits. A plaintiff from one of the Roundup lawsuits claims that she worked as a grower’s assistant on a crop field in New York from 1994 to 1998 where Roundup was regularly sprayed indoors and outdoors resulting in chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2012. She eventually quit the job and is currently seeking reasonable compensation and punitive damages in court.
