Jury Awards Over $80 Million to California Man in Roundup Trial -- 3rd Update
28 March 2019 - 11:51AM
Dow Jones News
By Ruth Bender and Sara Randazzo
A jury Wednesday awarded $80.3 million in damages to a
California resident the jurors found contracted cancer from
exposure to Bayer AG's Roundup weedkillers.
The San Francisco jury's finding that Monsanto Co. -- now owned
by German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer -- acted
negligently in failing to adequately warn about Roundup's danger is
the latest setback in Bayer's efforts to clear its products of
allegations that they trigger non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other
cancers.
Analysts had widely expected the jury to hold Bayer liable for
Edwin Hardeman's cancer in this two-phase federal court trial after
the six-person jury in the first phase already reached the
conclusion that Roundup was largely to blame for his illness.
While the first phase focused on scientific evidence to
determine whether a link exists between Roundup and Mr. Hardeman's
non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the jury in the second phase was to determine
Monsanto's liability.
"Bayer stands behind these products and will vigorously defend
them," the company said after the verdict, adding that it plans to
appeal and that Wednesday's verdict has no effect on future trials.
Attorneys for the plaintiff said the jury "sent a message to
Monsanto that it needs to change the way it does business."
Jurors heard competing narratives in the second phase on whether
Monsanto did enough to test the safety of glyphosate and pass that
information to customers.
"A responsible company would test its product. A responsible
company would tell consumers if they knew that it caused cancer,"
Jennifer Moore, an attorney for Mr. Hardeman, said during closing
arguments. "And Monsanto didn't do either of those things." Ms.
Moore said Monsanto was driven by greed and urged the jurors to
stop "the lying, the ghostwriting, the manipulation" with its
verdict.
Monsanto attorney Brian Stekloff countered during closing
arguments that the company has studied Roundup and its ingredients
for decades. "They did the tests, they provided it to regulators,
they stood behind what they did, and they acted reasonably based on
all of the science," he said.
The plaintiff's side, he said, is asking the jurors to believe
that Monsanto employees in St. Louis leave home each day and say,
"You know what, we are going to engage in a conspiracy to give
people cancer....That's what they are asking you to believe, and
that's outrageous."
Of the total damages awarded by the jury, $75 million were
punitive. That is less dramatic than the amount Bayer faced in the
first Roundup case to go to trial. In a state-court trial also in
San Francisco, a jury in August awarded $289.2 million to former
groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who also blamed regular Roundup use
for his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A judge later reduced the award to
$78.5 million, which Bayer is appealing.
Bayer has pledged to defend itself resolutely as it now faces
lawsuits from 11,200 farmers, gardeners and other Roundup users.
The company says Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are
safe and argues that over 800 scientific studies and decisions by
regulators around the world confirm that view.
"We are optimistic that at the end, facts will convince courts,"
Chief Executive Werner Baumann told German newspaper Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntags Zeitung in the days after the phase-one
verdict.
The market, however, has taken a dimmer view. Bayer shares
extended sharp losses at the start of the week after sliding 13% on
the day of the phase-one verdict. The jury's conclusion that
Roundup was a "substantial factor" in Mr. Hardeman's case made
analysts increasingly skeptical that Bayer can swing juries in its
favor in the next cases going to trial. Mr. Baumann said the market
was overreacting to the uncertain outcome of the litigation.
The lawsuits have ramped up since the International Agency for
Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization branch, in 2015
designated glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.
The next trial is slated to start Thursday in California state
court in Oakland. That case involves a married couple in their 70s,
Alva and Alberta Pilliod, who both blame diagnoses of non-Hodgkin
lymphoma on decadeslong Roundup use. A judge accelerated the case
because of their age and health condition.
With five other cases expected to go to trial this year, the
coming months will be crucial for determining how big a financial
liability the lawsuits could become for Bayer.
Tom Claps, a legal analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, said
Wednesday's verdict "doesn't bode well for the remaining cases" in
both state and federal court, since Monsanto thought the two-phased
trial would be a more favorable setting. Investors unfamiliar with
the U.S. legal system, he said, need to get comfortable with the
fact that the litigation could take years to play out and cost what
he estimates at between $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion to
resolve.
Other investors and analysts have said they would wait for at
least two or three further verdicts before estimating how much this
might cost Bayer.
Bayer, meanwhile, is committed to fighting the verdicts on
appeal.
Mr. Baumann has warned that the legal battle could take a few
years to resolve.
Write to Ruth Bender at Ruth.Bender@wsj.com and Sara Randazzo at
sara.randazzo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 27, 2019 20:36 ET (00:36 GMT)
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