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© Reuters. Edwin Hardeman's media address at the San Francisco Federal Court
By Alexandria Sage and Tina Bellon
SAN FRANCISCO / NEW YORK (Reuters) – An American jury awarded $ 80 million to a man who claimed he had used Bayer's glyphosate weed killer (DE 🙂 AG, his cancer, in the last legal setback for 39, company thousands of similar lawsuits.
The San Francisco Federal Court Jury said the company was responsible for the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman.
He awarded Hardeman $ 5 million in compensatory damages and $ 75 million in punitive damages after finding Roundup to be defective. Monsanto (NYSE 🙂 has not warned of the cancer risk of the herbicide and the fact that the company acted negligently.
Bayer bought the maker of Roundup Monsanto last year for $ 63 billion.
In a statement released Wednesday, the company said that she was disappointed with the jury's decision and that she would appeal the verdict.
"This verdict does not change the weight of more than four decades of in-depth science and the conclusions of regulators around the world who support the safety of our glyphosate herbicides and the fact that they are not carcinogenic." "said Bayer.
This lawsuit is only the second of 11,200 Roundup trials to be tried in the United States. Previous litigation and a previous verdict of the jury against the company caused a fall in Bayer's shares.
The verdict comes after the same jury on March 19 concluded that Roundup had been a "substantial factor" in the development of Hardeman's cancer, allowing the trial to proceed to a second step in determining liability and damages. Bayer shares fell more than 12% after last week's jury decision.
During the second phase of the trial, Hardeman's lawyers were able to present previously excluded internal documents that would show the company's efforts to influence scientists and regulators on the safety of the widely used product.
Hardeman's lawyers were seen by a Reuters reporter who was clapping in the elevator outside the courtroom after the verdict was announced.
"As demonstrated throughout the trial, since the creation of Roundup more than 40 years ago, Monsanto refuses to act responsibly," Hardeman's lawyers said in a statement, adding that the company had focused on "manipulation of public opinion and criticism of anyone raising legitimate and legitimate concerns about Roundup."
"NO SUNSET & # 39;
After the verdict, Hardeman told reporters that he was "overwhelmed".
"He is not back in the water yet," he said.
Hardeman's case was considered a record to help determine the range of damages and settle settlement options for more than 760 other federal cases pending before the same court before US District Judge Vince Chhabria.
In the first phase of the Hardeman case trial, the jury deliberated for more than four days before finding Roundup responsible for the cancer of the man. Bayer said on Wednesday that it was an indication that the jurors were "very likely split over scientific evidence".
The company said its appeal would focus on the judicial decisions made by Chhabria, which allowed some Hardeman scientists to testify despite the fact that the views of the plaintiffs' experts are described as "shaky" in a decision made in 2018 .
But legal experts have noted that the US Circuit's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees San Francisco's federal court, has generally been permissive in allowing the testimony of an expert.
Monsanto's Roundup was the first to contain glyphosate, the most widely used weed killer in the world. But it is no longer protected by a patent and many other versions are available. Bayer does not provide sales figures for the product.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and other regulatory agencies have found that glyphosate is probably not carcinogenic to humans. The carcinogenic branch of the World Health Organization in 2015 came to a different conclusion, classifying glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans".
In the United States, during the first Roundup trial, another California man received $ 289 million in August, following the jury's introduction of a court. This amount was subsequently reduced to $ 78 million and is being appealed.
Hardeman's case was significantly different from this trial after Chhabria decided to split the cases before him into two phases: one to determine the causal link on purely scientific grounds, the other to determine Bayer 's potential liability and damages only if the jury first decided that the weed killer was an important factor in the cancer.
This decision was considered beneficial for Bayer. Legal experts said the jury verdict in the first phase of the Hardeman case was a major setback, reducing the company's legal options in the future.
The Chhabria has scheduled another trial in May and a third trial is scheduled for this year. All three will be divided into phases of causality and responsibility.
Bayer is also facing another Roundup trial in a California state court starting March 28 and at least two lawsuits in a Missouri state court in the fall.
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