Earlier this month, Bayer faced another lawsuit by a laborer who alleged six years of Roundup exposure for his cancer.
According to a court memorandum, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, indicating that he was exposed to the herbicide at North East Laborer’s Training Academy in Pomfret, Connecticut, every week from about 2008 through 2014 while doing general maintenance. Petajasoja was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in February 2018. The case will join 2,500 other similar cases pending in the federal court system and more than 40,000 cases filed in various state courts nationwide.
Recently, the German company also appealed to the U.S. federal court to reverse a $25 million verdict awarded to a Californian man, who alleged the company’s Roundup weed killer for his cancer.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice backed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) argument that the jury's finding based on California law over the weed-killing product should be reversed as they have reviewed and approved its warning label.
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.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria is presiding over all Roundup federal multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation) in the Northern District of California.
