The agricultural and pharmaceutical company Bayer suffered another defeat in the glyphosate trials in the USA. As a plaintiff’s lawyers announced, a jury in a Philadelphia court concluded on Friday that Bayer must pay $2.25 billion (around 2.1 billion euros) to the man from Pennsylvania. It is the highest compensation payment to date in lawsuits involving weed killers containing glyphosate.
According to his own statements, the plaintiff developed cancer after coming into contact with the weedkiller 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 said it disagreed with the jury’s verdict and believed it had a strong case on appeal to overturn the verdict and eliminate the high damages. The verdict contradicts scientific findings and assessments by the authorities. The company highlighted that damages claims in previous court hearings had been reduced by 90 percent following an appeal.
Bayer pointed out that the company had prevailed in court in ten of the most recent 16 cases. 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.
Bayer brought the problems surrounding the weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate, into its own hands in 2018 with its $60 billion takeover of the US company Monsanto. The first judgment against the DAX company followed in the same year. This set off a wave of lawsuits in the USA. In 2020, Bayer launched a billion-dollar program to settle the majority of lawsuits without admitting liability. According to Bayer, 52,000 of the approximately 165,000 lawsuits filed were still open. Bayer emphasizes that it remains convinced of the safety of glyphosate.
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.