Bayer will take over the US company Monsanto in 2018. The Roundup's glyphosate-based weed killer then broke a wave of lawsuits, guilty verdicts and damages payments to the Dax company. Now, for the first time, a US appeals court is ruling.
The punishment for the Bayer Group was drastically reduced in the appeal process for the verdict in the first US trial of allegedly carcinogenic weed killers containing the active ingredient glyphosate. The competent court in San Francisco lowered the damages and punitive damages that the company has to pay to cancer victim Dewayne Johnson on Monday from originally $ 289 million to $ 20.5 million. However, the guilty verdict was not reversed as requested by Bayer.
Bayer welcomed the decision of the Court of Appeal in a statement as "a step in the right direction". However, it was still considered that the judgment was not in line with the evidence presented at the trial and the applicable law. The company will review its legal remedies and is considering reconsidering the case and bringing the case to the Supreme Court of California. Bayer continues to stand by that the weed killer is a safe product.
Bayer takes action against judgments
The plaintiff Johnson, who was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 2014, had blamed the weed killer Roundup of the US seed manufacturer Monsanto, which was taken over from Bayer in 2018, for his deadly suffering and accused the company of not disclosing the dangers. A jury of judges therefore sentenced Bayer in August 2018 to compensation in the hundreds of millions. The amount was then quickly reduced to $ 78 million, but Bayer still appealed.
The group has challenged all of the three previous US glyphosate judgments. Now the first decision has been made by a higher authority, but it is no longer of great importance. Because the company recently agreed with most of the many US plaintiffs on a comprehensive comparison. The multi-billion dollar compromise is expected to remove most of the legal problems that the Leverkusen-based company faced with the $ 63 billion Monsanto takeover in one fell swoop.
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