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It was Christmas morning 2014 when Edwin Hardeman, a resident of Sonoma County, looked in the mirror and saw a big lump on the side of his neck.
Two months later, he was diagnosed with a blood cancer called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and started chemotherapy.
Today, Hardeman is at the center of a high-profile trial in the US District Court in San Francisco, where he faces the company that makes Roundup, the weed killer he's been using for about three decades, and he gave him cancer.
Hardeman's case is the first of three opposing lawsuits that, if juries decide in favor of plaintiffs, could establish settlement standards for thousands of ongoing lawsuits across the country against the maker of Roundup Monsanto, a branch of the conglomerate based in Germany Bayer, alleging a key ingredient makes people sick.
"You have this man here in Sonoma, and luckily his case has the potential to move the needle," said David Levine, a professor at Hastings University, attentive observer of the case. Federal jurors will hear Tuesday the findings of the first phase of Mr. Hardeman's trial.
They will decide whether the testimony of doctors, Hardeman and other evidence presented by his team of lawyers supports his claims that the glyphosate product is a carcinogen and that its use has contributed to his disease.
If the jury's verdict is favorable to him, then Hardeman will be able to present evidence in support of his allegations that Monsanto introduced its popular weed killer as a safe product, while concealing research that could have provided the public with information. about its potential health risks.
He claims unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
The herbicide manufacturer faces an avalanche of lawsuits from people claiming that Roundup has caused cancer and other health problems. A spokesman for Bayer said that there were about 11,200 cases both in state courts and in federal courts, and said that "this is not an indication of the property -based on the dispute ".
In what has been described as the first Roundup case to be judged, a San Francisco jury inflicted $ 289 million in damages on a former school guard with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after found that Monsanto had not warned the applicant of the potential health risks associated with the use of Roundup, which he has done over the years as part of his work.
A judge reduced the damages to $ 78 million and Monsanto appealed the decision.
In response to questions from The Press Democrat, a spokesman for Bayer said that "none of the scientific data presented at the epidemiological, animal or mechanical trial – can conclude that glyphosate or the formulation of Roundup was a substantial cause" of the plaintiff's cancer.
The company defended its herbicide as safe to use, based on "extensive scientific research over four decades."
"Although we have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Hardeman, Bayer strongly supports these products and will defend them with vigor," said company spokesman Daniel Childs.
Hardeman could not be contacted and his lawyers did not respond to repeated requests for comments made over the past week. A representative of the law firm said that they were not speaking to the media during the trial.
When Hardeman testified in San Francisco's federal court last week, he described the regular use of Roundup for nearly three decades, first on a Gualala property, then on a 56-acre parcel in Forestville, where he was called home between 1988 and about five years. .
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