California appeals court upholds Monsanto-Bayer conviction

In David’s fight against Goliath, the San Francisco appeals court ruled in David’s favor. Edwin Hardeman, a retiree sick with cancer he attributed to the use of the weedkiller Roundup, had filed a lawsuit against Monsanto, bought by the German group Bayer. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015 and linked his disease to regular use of this glyphosate-based product.

Sentenced at first instance, Bayer had asked the California Court of Appeal to return to the case of Edwin Hardeman. The latter announced Friday that it refused and confirmed the group’s order to pay $ 25 million in damages to the retiree.

“Since 2015, thousands of cancer victims have sued Monsanto”

The judges “confirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of Edwin Hardeman in his action alleging that Monsanto’s pesticide Roundup caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma,” said the ruling, which recalls that “since 2015 thousands of victims of cancer sued Monsanto in state and federal courts ”.

During a first appeal in July 2019, the compensation to be paid to Edwin Hardeman had been revised downwards. An initial judgment in March 2019 awarded the plaintiff $ 80 million, a sum reduced to $ 25 million, including $ 5 million for compensatory damages and $ 20 million for punitive damages.

For Monsanto, no study proves the dangerousness of Roundup

Edwin Hardeman was one of the first plaintiffs to sue Monsanto, accusing the herbicide he had used on his large property for 25 years of causing cancer and the Monsanto group of deceiving users into claiming that the glyphosate product was harmless.

Monsanto has always insisted that no study had concluded on the dangerousness of glyphosate and Roundup, put on the market in the 70s. The German group Bayer acquired the American Monsanto in 2018 for 63 billion dollars.