Monsanto ordered to pay US$80 mn in Roundup cancer trial

(San Francisco) AFP: Monsanto has been ordered to pay some US $80 million to an American retiree who blames his cancer on the agribusiness giant’s weedkiller Roundup, in a case that could influence the outcome of thousands more like it. A San Francisco jury yesterday found the firm, which is owned by Bayer, had been “negligent by not using reasonable care” to warn of the risks of its product, ordering it to pay Edwin Hardeman US $75 million in punitive damages, a little over US $5 million in compensation and US $200,000 for medical expenses.
 
It was the second stinging legal verdict for Monsanto in recent months after it lost a case to a California school groundskeeper suffering from terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and was ordered to pay out tens of millions of dollars.

The jury also found that Roundup’s design was defective and that the product lacked sufficient warnings of potential risk.

The same jury had previously found in an earlier part of the trial that a quarter century exposure to Roundup, whose principal ingredient is controversial chemical glyphosate, was a ‘substantial factor’ in giving the 70-year-old Hardeman non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The decision also marks a major setback for Bayer, which purchased Monsanto in June 2018 for US $63 billion.