Failure in the glyphosate process
Bayer has to pay billions to cancer sufferers
January 27, 2024, 6:48 a.m
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With the takeover of the glyphosate developer Monsanto, Bayer received numerous lawsuits. The company now has to pay over two billion US dollars to a man suffering from cancer. The jury ruled that the herbicide was the reason for his illness. The company doesn’t want to accept this.
Bayer suffered another defeat in the glyphosate trials in the USA. According to a plaintiff’s lawyers, a jury in a Philadelphia court concluded that the company must pay $2.25 billion (around 2.1 billion euros) to the man from Pennsylvania. According to his own statements, he developed cancer after coming into contact with the weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate.
The court ruled that his cancer was the result of several years of using Roundup for gardening in his home. “The jury’s punitive damages award sends a clear message that this multinational corporation needs fundamental change,” said Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, the plaintiff’s attorneys, in a joint statement. The verdict specifically provides for compensatory damages of $250 million and punitive damages of $2 billion.
Bayer then stated that it disagreed with the jury’s verdict and believed that it had strong arguments in an appeal to overturn the verdict and have the high damages struck out. The company highlighted that damages claims in previous court hearings had been reduced by 90 percent following an appeal.
EU extended glyphosate approval
After losing five lawsuits in a row, Bayer won a glyphosate lawsuit in the USA for the first time in December. The verdict from a jury in San Benito County was consistent with the evidence in the case that the weed killer Roundup does not cause cancer and was not responsible for the plaintiff’s illness, the company said at the time. The company has long been exposed to similar lawsuits in the USA. The company brought the lawsuits in-house when it took over the glyphosate developer Monsanto in 2018.
According to Bayer, 52,000 of the total of around 165,000 lawsuits filed were still open. Bayer had always rejected the allegations against the herbicide. The question has been controversial in science for years. In November, the EU Commission extended the approval of the weedkiller for ten years. Authorities worldwide classified the drug as not carcinogenic. The cancer research agency IARC of the World Health Organization (WHO), however, rated the active ingredient as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015. Bayer has already paid around $9.5 billion to get lawsuits settled.