A man from California has been awarded $332 million by a jury after claiming that Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer. The resident, Mike Dennis, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2020 and attributed it to his long-term use of Roundup. Dennis specifically pointed to the active ingredient glyphosate as the cause of his cancer. His attorney, Adam Peavy, stated that glyphosate is genotoxic and causes DNA damage, leading to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Dennis has been in remission for almost three years, but there is no cure for his disease.
A San Diego Superior Court jury ruled in favor of Dennis, finding that Monsanto failed to warn consumers about the risks of Roundup. Dennis received $7 million in compensatory damages and $325 million in punitive damages. However, the jury did side with Bayer, the company that owns Monsanto, stating that the product design of Roundup was not defective and the company was not negligent. Bayer, headquartered in Germany, plans to appeal the verdict.
Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion, becoming the largest seed and agrochemical company in the world. Despite retiring the Monsanto brand, Bayer faced numerous lawsuits related to Roundup. In 2020, Bayer announced a settlement of up to $10.9 billion to resolve thousands of filed and unfiled claims. The Supreme Court also rejected Bayer’s attempt to dismiss thousands of lawsuits claiming that Roundup causes cancer.
A government study conducted in 2022 found glyphosate in over 80% of urine samples from both children and adults in the US. The study, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, tested 2,310 urine samples and identified glyphosate in 1,885 of them.
Source: The Associated Press