Three former users of the weed killer Roundup were awarded corresponding payments on Friday. They blamed the controversial product for their cancer. The federal court jury in Jefferson City, Missouri, awarded James Draeger, Valorie Gunther and Dan Anderson a total of $61.1 million in compensatory damages and $500 million each in punitive damages. In the United States, juries often award large sums to plaintiffs, which judges often later reduce.
“The verdict will not stand, we will definitely appeal against it,” said Bayer on Sunday when asked. The amount of punitive damages alone violates the American Constitution. “Unlike previous cases, the courts in recent cases improperly allowed plaintiffs to misrepresent the regulatory and scientific facts,” the group said in a statement.
Bayer has “strong arguments” to have the latest judgments revised. The group has won nine of the last 13 court cases and settled the majority of the lawsuits. “We will continue to defend the robust scientific and regulatory evidence in court, if necessary on appeal,” said the DAX group. Bayer remained convinced of the safety of glyphosate.
Bayer brought the problems surrounding the weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate, into its own hands in 2018 with its $60 billion takeover of Monsanto. In the same year, the first judgment against the DAX group followed, which set off a wave of lawsuits in the USA. In 2020, Bayer launched a billion-dollar program to settle the majority of the lawsuits – without admitting liability.
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Bayer has already processed the majority of the lawsuits. In the spring, when the business figures for 2022 were presented, it was said that of the total of around 154,000 claims registered, around 109,000 had been compared or did not meet the comparison criteria. As of December 31, 2022, Bayer’s provision for settlements of existing and future glyphosate lawsuits still amounted to $6.4 billion.
Bayer stops study with hopeful Asundexian due to lack of effectiveness
Setback for Bayer: The pharmaceutical and agricultural group has canceled a study for the most important drug candidate in its pipeline of new developments. The phase III study (Oceanic-AF) to investigate Asundexian in comparison to the oral anticoagulant Apixaban in patients with atrial fibrillation and at risk of stroke was stopped, as Bayer announced ad hoc late on Sunday evening. Bayer is thus following a recommendation from the independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) as part of ongoing study monitoring.
Asundexian was shown to be inferior to the control arm of the study. Bayer will analyze the data to better understand the result and publish the data. The clinical phase III of the Oceanic-Stroke sub-study, however, is to be continued.
Bayer has high hopes for Asundexian, which is expected to replace the previous bestseller Xarelto from 2026. Only recently, the ongoing studies on the product were expanded to include an additional indication. According to initial data, the novel factor XIa anticoagulant had shown a lower risk of bleeding than the investigational drug Eliquis (Apixaban). Bayer recently assumed that it would be able to achieve annual peak sales of more than 5 billion euros with Asundexian, making it the strongest drug in the pipeline.
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JEFFERSON (dpa-AFX) / DJG/rio/mgo
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