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US-ENVIRONMENT-HEALTH-ROUNDUP-TRIAL
Controversial Roundup weed killer on trial again in US
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The controversial Roundup weed
killer goes on trial again Monday in the United States, six months after a
groundskeeper won the first-ever lawsuit accusing the chemical of causing
cancer.
Roundup, a brand owned by German chemical and pharmaceutical giant Bayer
after its purchase of US-based Monsanto last year, contains glyphosate that
environmentalists and other critics have long maintained leads to cancer.
Glyphosate is used in weed killers made by several companies, and is
currently the most used herbicide around the world.
Jurors in August unanimously found that Monsanto acted with “malice” and
that its weed killers Roundup and Ranger Pro contributed “substantially” to
Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s terminal illness.
Now another Californian, Edwin Hardeman, accuses Roundup of contributing
to his cancer, which is of the same type as Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
(NHL).
Hardeman, of Sonoma County — north of San Francisco — says he used
Roundup extensively to treat his property from the 1980s until 2012,
according to his lawyers.
He filed a complaint against Monsanto in early 2016, a year after being
diagnosed with cancer.
According to the complaint, the company “knew or had reason to know that
Roundup was defective and unsafe” and that exposure to the product “could
result in cancer and other severe illnesses and injuries.”
Information that Monsanto provided or communicated “failed to contain
adequate warnings and precautions that would have enabled Mr Hardeman, and
similarly situated individuals, to utilize the product safely and with
adequate protection,” Hardeman’s lawyers added.
Instead, the company “disseminated information that was inaccurate, false,
and misleading,” they alleged.
Monsanto, which has sold Roundup worldwide for more than 40 years, is
holding firm to its line of defense. The products are not dangerous if the
conditions of use are followed, as proven by hundreds of scientific studies,
it says.
Like the Johnson trial, the new case will take place in San Francisco but
it will be the first heard in a federal court, where some legal
technicalities differ from the state level where Johnson won his case.
Hardeman’s is the leading case in a multi-district litigation of hundreds
of similar cases which are legally linked, but will be heard separately.
Although not a class action lawsuit, the outcome of the Hardeman case will
provide a signal for the other jurisdictions.
The Johnson precedent will also hang over the new trial which should last
four or five weeks.
MORE/MSY/0918 hrs
Johnson was diagnosed in 2014 with NHL, a cancer that affects white blood
cells. He said he repeatedly used Ranger Pro while working at a school in
Benicia, California.
– $78 million in damages –
Jurors in his case last August ordered Monsanto to pay $250 million in
punitive damages along with compensatory damages and other costs, bringing
the total award to nearly $290 million.
Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who presided over the case in California State
Court, later denied Monsanto’s request for a new trial — but cut the damages
to $78 million to comply with a law regarding how such awards must be
calculated.
The ruling sent Bayer shares tumbling on fears that a wave of costly
litigation could be about to break on the firm.
In November, Bayer said it would slash 12,000 jobs in a restructuring
after the takeover of Monsanto, which asked a US appeals court to toss out
the Johnson verdict.
At Bayer’s request, the Hardeman trial will be conducted in two stages.
The first phase will seek to determine whether Roundup is responsible for the
complainant’s cancer.
If the jury concludes that it is, the next step will be to decide whether
or not Monsanto has a liability and, if so, what compensation should be paid.
For the judge, the two-stage process aims to help the jury decide the
possible liability of glyphosate without being influenced by the reputation
of Monsanto, which has a controversial image all over the world, accused of
having manipulated studies.
Praised by farmers for its effectiveness and low cost, glyphosate is under
particular scrutiny in Europe and especially in France, where authorities in
January banned a form of the herbicide, Roundup Pro 360.
But the chemical has been subject to contradictory decisions around the
world.
The European Union renewed its authorization of glyphosate for five years
in November 2017, but President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to outlaw its use
in France by 2021.
A 2015 study by a World Health Organization agency concluded that
glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic.”
Environmental groups including Greenpeace have called for an outright ban
in Europe for glyphosate but Monsanto insisted the herbicide meets EU
licensing standards.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0918 hrs