Roundup Herbicide Trial Orders Bayer to Pay $2.25 Billion in Settlement

A U.S. court on Friday ordered Bayer to pay $2.25 billion to a Pennsylvania man who claims he developed cancer because of exposure to the company’s Roundup herbicide, the plaintiff’s lawyers said.

A jury in a court in Philadelphia, US, concluded that John McKivision’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, was the result of years of the man’s use of the herbicide Roundup for work in his garden .

The verdict includes $250 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages.

“The jury’s award of punitive damages sends a clear message that this multinational corporation needs change from top to bottom,” McKivision attorneys Tom Kline and Jason Itkin said in a joint statement.

In a statement, Bayer said it disagrees “with the jury’s negative verdict which conflicts with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and global scientific and regulatory assessments, and believes it has strong arguments in an appeal to quash such verdict and eliminate or reduce excessive and unconstitutional compensation.”

Bayer added that some compensation for past damages had been reduced by more than 90%.

The verdict follows five other recent victories late last year by plaintiffs suing Bayer over Roundup, though the company won the most recent trial in December, as well as a number of earlier lawsuits. In total, the company has won ten of the last 16 herbicide trials.

In the United States, about 165,000 claims have been filed against the company for personal injuries allegedly caused by Roundup, which Bayer integrated as part of its $63 billion acquisition of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018. Most of the plaintiffs, like McKivision, claim that the product caused them to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Bayer says decades of studies show that Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

Roundup is among the most widely used herbicides in the United States, although the company phased out sales for home use last year.

In 2020, Bayer settled most of the then-pending Roundup cases for up to $9.6 billion, but was unable to reach a settlement covering future cases. More than 50 thousand complaints remain pending.

Source: Terra

Rose

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