Monsanto appeals a $25.2 million damage verdict against Roundup herbicide to Supreme Court

Monsanto has challenged a $25.2 million award to a cancer patient.

Edwin Hardeman

According to a recent story by Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle, the agribusiness giant told the Supreme Court that the damage verdict in favor of the patient, Edwin Hardeman, who sprayed Roundup on his North Bay properties "should never have gone to the jury." 

The basis of the claim by Bayer, Monsanto's parent company, is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had concluded that the herbicide, the world's most widely used, was safe.

However, an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Agency for Research on Cancer, had concluded in 2015, that the main ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, "was a probable cause of human cancer, a finding endorsed by California health officials," the Chronicle piece says.

The court is expected to consider the appeal at its weekly conference Dec. 10.

Monsanto filed the appeal despite it agreeing to replace glyphosate "with another active ingredient for U.S. home and garden sales, starting in 2023, while continuing to market the current version for agricultural use," Egelko's story reports.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a May ruling that upheld Hardeman's damage award, "said the EPA's approval did not carry the force of law, and it did not preclude a judge or jury from deciding whether Monsanto had violated a California law requiring warnings against risks that are 'known or knowable.'" 

Hardeman was diagnosed with lymphoma, a sometimes fatal disease, in 2015 after having used Roundup for 26 years on properties in Galla and Santa Rosa.

A federal court jury in July 2019 found the weed-killer was a "substantial cause" of his cancer. It awarded him, according to Egelko's story, "damages for economic losses, pain and suffering and emotional distress, along with punitive damages against the company for selling a product it knew, or should have known, to be dangerous." 

The article also notes that "state courts, meanwhile, have upheld damages of $21.5 million to Dewayne 'Lee' Johnson, diagnosed with terminal cancer after spraying the herbicide as a groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District, and $82.2 million to Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, who sprayed Roundup on their crops for 30 years."

More information about consumer products that may cause disease can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

30,000 suits against weed-killer still in play

Bayer, parent of Monsanto, agrees to pay $10 billion to thousands who claim Roundup caused their cancer

Bayer AG has unexpectedly agreed to pay $10 billion in cancer settlements in regard to the world's most widely used weed-killer.

According to a story by Hannah Denham in The Washington Post, the German company, the world's largest seed and agrochemical maker that had merged with agribusiness giant Monsanto in a $63 billion deal, "will allocate between $8.8 billion and $9.6 billion to resolve the current Roundup litigation."

That will cover "75 percent of the 125,000 current filed and unfixed claims that the product leads to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma" — meaning that some 30,000 suits remain unsettled.

Judge Vince Chhabria

In addition, Bayer "will also pay $1.25 billion for a separate class agreement for potential future claims, which will be subject to approval in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by Judge Vince Chhabria," Denham's piece reports.

Although agreed to, the settlements have yet to be signed and sealed.

At the time of the 2018 merger, and since, Monsanto has "maintained that glyphosate — the active weed-killing ingredient in Roundup — had a history of safe use, and Bayer has echoed that since its acquisition."

In 2015, however, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, proclaimed that the herbicide was "probably carcinogenic to humans."

Details of the settlements became public today, only one day after U.S. District Judge William Shubb, ignoring the verdicts of three California juries against Monsanto, had issued a permanent injunction against the state's requiring a warning label on the pesticide.

Plaintiffs in those cases had won nearly $300 million. Monsanto, however, will continue to appeal all of them, and the settlements — which involved negotiations with 25 different law firms — do not apply to any of the three.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, according to EcoWatch, an environmental website, had “argued that the [Environmental Protection Agency's earlier] insistence that Roundup does not cause cancer is spurious since there was evidence the company had unduly influenced the federal agency and had ‘ghost-written’ purported research studies on the product’s safety.” 

EcoWatch strongly suggested that the settlement, one of the largest ever in U.S. civil litigation, came about because of "the spate of lawsuits and their legal fees [that made Bayer] lose 40 percent of its value."

The plaintiffs also alleged, the website's story said, that “Bayer manipulated studies and deceived the scientific community to make glyphosate seem safer than it actually is, according to Reuters.”

The Post article noted meanwhile that "Bayer said that the settlement was a unanimous decision from the company's board of management, supervisory board and input from the special litigation committee, adding that the settlement doesn't mean an admission of liability or wrongdoing."

The piece indicated further that "chief executive Werner Baumann said in a statement that the action allows the company to 'bring a long period of uncertainty to an end.'" 

More information on court cases alleging that products cause disease can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.