Biotech firm Monsanto was ordered by a Pennsylvania jury to pay $175 million in damages to a man who allegedly suffered from cancer after using the company’s weed killer for two decades.
On Oct. 27, jurors in the state court in Philadelphia awarded plaintiff Ernie Caranci, 83, $25 million in actual damages and $150 million in punitive damages over claims that he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Monsanto’s weed killer “Roundup” for 20 years in his garden. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a type of cancer that forms in the lymph system.
“Monsanto knew exactly what it was doing when it chose not to warn people Roundup causes cancer … If they told people the truth, that this could cause cancer, it would hurt the sales.”
Following the court decision, German firm Bayer, which owns Monsanto, said it disagreed with the jury’s verdict. “We can get this unfounded verdict overturned and the excessive damage awards reduced through our appeal,” the company stated.
Mr. Caranci blamed glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, for being responsible for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Motion for New Trial
In the Oct. 7 verdict, the state court jury voted 10–2 to favor the plaintiff’s argument, which is the minimum majority required out of the 12 votes in the state to be considered a valid verdict in a civil case.Monsanto claimed in the motion that a juror from the 12-member jury—referred to as Juror Nine—told them that at some point in their deliberations, the jury was divided 7–5 in favor of the plaintiff. At the time, a court clerk was speaking with the court judge on some clarifications sought by the jury.
The court clerk returned and informed the jury that they had to reach 10 “no” or 10 “yes” votes to settle the matter. If they failed to do so, jury members may have had to come back for two more days to deliberate on the issue.
Juror Nine told Monsanto that “as soon as we learned that we had to reach 10 votes either way, three of the six who had voted in favor of the defendant or who were about to switch over to the defendant quickly moved back to the plaintiff’s side,” according to the motion.
The “overall feeling was that this was the only expedient way to avoid having to come back on Monday,” Juror Nine said, adding that a few jurors “were not afraid to show and voice their frustration at the thought of having to come back, and one threatened not to come back.”
Monsanto called these events “presumptively prejudicial” under Pennsylvania law, and demanded a new trial on the $175 million case.
Mr. Itkin and Tom Kline, another lawyer representing Mr. Caranci, dismissed the company’s motion. “We believe that Monsanto’s scorched earth trial tactics which includes attacks upon the judge, the jury, and integrity of the legal process will fail,” they said in a joint statement, according to Reuters.
Bayer’s Roundup Challenge
The $175 million damage verdict is another court loss for Bayer related to Roundup. Earlier in October, the company had lost a $1.25 million verdict on the product that went in favor of the plaintiff. And on Oct. 31, a California court awarded $332 million in damages to a plaintiff who claimed to have contracted cancer by using the weed killer.As such, the company lost three trials related to Roundup last month. Prior to that, Bayer had won nine trials on similar claims consecutively.
Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion. Since then, it has been trying to deal with thousands of claims related to Roundup. In 2020, Bayer declared it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle around 125,000 filed and unfiled claims against the product.
In a 2022 securities filing, Bayer said that it was facing 154,000 claims related to Roundup, with people accusing the weed killer of causing cancer, according to Bloomberg. By the end of last year, nearly 110,000 were dismissed or settled, leaving the company with around 40,000 cases to deal with.
Bayer has set aside $16 billion to deal with the costs of Roundup litigation. However, the $16 billion may not be enough given that multiple plaintiffs had recently won against Bayer over Roundup lawsuits, Morgan Stanley analysts recently said in a note.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond professor who teaches law, said that “anyone who thinks Bayer’s Roundup problems are over is kidding themselves.”
“There are some really good lawyers getting ready to try a bunch of cases in places like Philadelphia and California that could result in significant verdicts.”
Bayer’s recent struggle over lawsuits is reminiscent of the 2018–2019 period when the company suffered a string of trial losses. It was these losses that forced the firm to set aside $16 billion to deal with the lawsuits.
Bayer’s stock price has been tanking since 2018. Between Jan. 2, 2018 and Nov. 8, 2023, the share price dropped from around $101 to roughly $41, a decline of close to 60 percent. The company has said that it intends to pull Roundup from stores by the end of this year.
