A US judge on Monday affirmed a verdict against Bayer AG unit Monsanto that found its glyphosate-based weed killers responsible for a man’s terminal cancer, but said the US$250 million punitive damages portion of the award had to be reduced.
According to a ruling in San Francisco’s Superior Court of California, Judge Suzanne Bolanos said she would slash the punitive damages award to US$39 million if lawyers for school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson agreed.
Monsanto, which denies the allegations, had asked the judge to throw out the entire original US$289 million verdict or order a new trial on the punitive damages portion.
Photo: AP
A jury on Aug. 10 found that the company’s glyphosate-based weed killers, including RoundUp and Ranger Pro, had caused Johnson’s cancer and that the company failed to warn consumers about the risks.
The verdict wiped 10 percent off the value of the company and marked the first such decision against Monsanto, which faces more than 8,000 similar lawsuits in the US.
“The court’s decision to reduce the punitive damage award by more than US$200 million is a step in the right direction, but we continue to believe that the liability verdict and damage awards are not supported by the evidence at trial or the law and plan to file an appeal with the California Court of Appeal,” Bayer said in a statement.
The German company, which this year bought Monsanto for US$63 billion, has said decades of scientific studies and real-world use have shown glyphosate to be safe for human use.
Lawyers for Johnson in a statement said they were still reviewing whether to accept the reduced award or retry the punitive damages portion.
“The evidence presented to this jury was, quite frankly, overwhelming,” the lawyers said.
The amount of punitive damages is limited by law, and Bolanos said California’s constitution did not permit a higher award.
If Johnson accepts the reduced damages, the final verdict would order Monsanto to pay a total of US$78 million, split equally between compensatory and punitive damages.
Bolanos’ decision on Monday is a turnaround from a previous tentative ruling she issued on Oct. 10.
In that preliminary order, Bolanos said that she was considering ordering a new trial on punitive damages, and that Johnson had failed to meet his burden of producing clear and convincing evidence of malice or oppression by Monsanto, a requirement for allowing a jury to award punitive damages.
However, following that tentative ruling, at least five of the jurors who delivered the Aug. 10 verdict sent letters to the judge, urging her to uphold their decision.
Bolanos did not directly refer to the jurors’ letters in her ruling on Monday, but said the jury was entitled to its findings.
In September last year, the US Environmental Protection Agency concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found that the chemical was not a likely carcinogen to humans.
However, in 2015, the cancer unit of the WHO classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Johnson’s case, filed in 2016, was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, that he alleged was caused by years of glyphosate exposure.
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