Bayer, owner of Monsanto, will appeal a heavy order by a US jury to pay more than $1.5 billion to three plaintiffs claiming their cancer is linked to the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup. “We will certainly appeal a judgment awarding an amount of damages that violates (by their magnitude) the American Constitution,” a company spokesperson told AFP on Sunday.
A controversial weedkiller
A court in Jefferson City, Missouri, on Friday ordered Monsanto to pay a total of more than $1.5 billion to three Americans who blamed their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma on years of use of the controversial weedkiller, the Bloomberg agency.
In the United States, this new legal setback suffered by Monsanto is the fourth in a month, seeming to reverse a cycle after a series of nine judgments in favor of the company.
“Unlike previous cases, (US) courts have recently wrongly allowed plaintiffs to misrepresent regulatory and scientific facts,” Bayer continues in a statement.
Glyphosate renewed for 10 years in the EU
These plaintiffs “claimed that there were safety concerns” during the review to extend the use of glyphosate in the European Union and during the evaluation by the United States Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA),” says Bayer.
However, the European Commission announced Thursday that it would renew the authorization of glyphosate in the EU for 10 years, despite the abstention of seven countries, including France and Germany, following a vote of member states.
The EPA, for its part, continues to “confirm that glyphosate is not carcinogenic”, claims the Leverkusen group, which claims to have “solid arguments to revise recent court decisions” in the United States.
160,000 trials
In 2019, a Californian appeals court reduced to 87 million euros a penalty of $2 billion in damages handed down at first instance against Monsanto in a similar trial. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion, has since found itself entangled in multiple procedures related to weedkiller in the United States.
Some 113,000 of the 160,000 lawsuits filed by alleged victims have been concluded to date. The group has set aside $16 billion to cover the legal risk linked to Roundup.