Herbicide manufacturer Monsanto's appeal to boycott the decision to tag glyphosate found in Roundup weed killer as carcinogenic was rejected by the California State's Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court's decision came as a result of the announcement by California First District Court of Appeals that the state has the authority to place glyphosate on its Proposition 65 list, which requires that products containing the herbicide must carry a cancer warning label on them. Glyphosate was added to the State's Prop 65 list last July by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) and argued Monsanto and other herbicide manufacturers to follow cancer warning label instructions for all weed killers containing glyphosate. Recently, the first Roundup trial concluded with the California jury awarding a former school district groundskeeper dying of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with $289 million in damages.
More than 4,000 lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto by families of individuals suffering from cancer due to contact with glyphosate found in Roundup weed killer. All lawsuits claim the manufacturer purposely neglected to warn consumers regarding the carcinogenic product. Roundup lawsuits are consolidated as a part of multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation), presided over by Judge Vince Chhabria, in the U.S. District Court of San Francisco.
