A California court awarded $332 million in damages to a man who attributed his affliction with cancer from using a weed killer from agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto for a period of over three decades.
On Tuesday, a San Diego Superior Court jury awarded Mike Dennis, 57, from Carlsbad, California, damages in a lawsuit he filed against Monsanto. The lawsuit was related to the weed killer “Roundup” manufactured by Monsanto, a company owned by German mega-corporation Bayer. The suit alleged that Mr. Dennis used Roundup for 35 years on lawns and gardens, which eventually led to him contracting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that forms in the lymph system. He was diagnosed with the disease in 2020.
The jury awarded Mr. Dennis $325 million in punitive damages and $7 million in compensatory damages. While jurors found there was no defect in the design of Roundup and that Bayer was not negligent, it concluded that Monsanto failed to provide warnings about the risks posed by the product.
The lawsuit specifically blamed an active ingredient in Roundup—glyphosate—for being responsible for the cancer.
“Glyphosate, the active ingredient for roundup, is genotoxic,” Adam Peavy, an attorney who represented Dennis in the case, said in an interview with NBC 7. “It causes DNA damage once it’s absorbed through the skin, and that’s what ultimately causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
As doctors were unable to find out what Mr. Dennis was suffering from, they would treat him with eczema or psoriasis. However, Mr. Dennis’ body did not respond to these treatments.
Mr. Peavy said, “Most doctors don’t know a lot about glyphosate in Roundup. But he asked his doctors, did a little more research, then ultimately contacted us.”
The attorney pointed out that Mr. Dennis, a former land surveyor, “took care of multiple homes over a 35-year period. He started spraying it with his dad, and they mixed the concentrate back in the mid-80s, and then he transitioned into using the ready-mix version that’s already pre-done.”
Even though the cancer has been in remission for roughly three years, Mr. Peavy said that his client is still suffering as there is currently no cure for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Mike deals with it on a daily basis, wondering when it’s going to come back,” he said. “His doctors have told him it’s going to come back, and we’re just waiting to see if that happens.”
Dealing With Roundup Lawsuits
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, according to the outlet.
The $332 billion compensation judgment followed a $175 million verdict and a $1.25 million verdict in favor of plaintiffs in Roundup lawsuits in October. In both cases, the plaintiffs accused Roundup of being responsible for their cancers.
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 intends to pull out Roundup from stores by the end of this year.
Glyphosate Harms
Several organizations have looked into whether glyphosate causes cancer, arriving at different conclusions.However, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) sees glyphosate as “probably” carcinogenic to humans. There was enough evidence of cancer among animals exposed to glyphosate and limited evidence among humans.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if a large amount of glyphosate is swallowed by a human being, it can cause nausea and vomiting.
Glyphosate has been associated with “respiratory effects (lung and nose), such as irritation in the nose, or asthma, in people using glyphosate products,” the agency said.
“Workers that use large amounts of glyphosate products for long periods of time may be more likely to develop respiratory effects.”
Glyphosate has been observed to be harmful to the development of babies when pregnant animals were given large amounts of the substance. Such issues included lower body weight and problems with organ and bone growth.
