Bayer AG lost 3 Roundup-related verdicts totaling more than $500M in less than 2 weeks

By oliviacook // 2023-11-07

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Bayer AG has lost three straight Roundup-related verdicts amounting to more than half a billion dollars in total – a drastic shift from the past two years when Monsanto won nine defense verdicts in a row. Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agricultural seeds and herbicides from pesticide maker Monsanto Co. in 2018. (Related: Monsanto's poison playbook: How the chemical giant sold the world on a toxic pesticide.) The first loss for the chemical giant was in St. Louis on Oct. 20, when 12 jurors in the Missouri 22nd Judicial Circuit Court unanimously found Bayer-Monsanto liable for John Durnell's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after using the Roundup herbicide – granting him $1.25 million in damages, Fox4 reported. Durnell was represented by Wylie Blair, Greg Pals and Scott Sifton from St. Louis-based OnderLaw; Roe Frazer, Trey Frazer and Grant LaBar from Nashville-based Frazer Law Firm; and Isaac Conner from Manson, Johnson, Conner PLLC of Nashville. Blair said: "New evidence that Monsanto's herbicide cocktail contains additional carcinogens does not bode well for Monsanto's decades-long claim that Roundup is safe. Those carcinogenic chemicals include 1,4 Dioxide, NNG, arsenic and formaldehyde. These chemicals alone, independent of glyphosate, can cause cancer, effectively rendering moot Monsanto's position that glyphosate does not cause cancer." On Oct. 28, Bloomberg reported that a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury ordered Bayer's Monsanto unit to pay 83-year-old Ernie Caranci a total of $175 million. – $25 million in actual damages and $150 million in punitive damages over his claims that 20 years of using Roundup in his garden caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. In a joint statement, Caranci's lawyers – Tom Kline of Kline & Specter PC in Philadelphia and Jason Itkin of Houston-based Arnold & Itkin, co-lead counsel for the plaintiff – said they were "pleased that Ernie Caranci got justice today. We believe that the jury's finding that Monsanto's conduct was outrageous is a harbinger of things to come in the Roundup litigation nationally." They added that Caranci is currently undergoing treatment for the fourth recurrence of his cancer. In a statement, a Bayer spokesperson said the company disagreed with the verdict. On Oct. 31, Bloomberg reported that state court jurors in San Diego, California, ordered Bayer's Monsanto unit to pay 67-year-old Michael Dennis of Carlsbad a total of $332 million – $7 million in actual damages and $325 million in punitive damages – contending that his rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was related to three decades of using the weed killer Roundup. One of Dennis' lawyers, Adam Peavy, said the plaintiff was diagnosed in 2020 with a rare form of T-cell lymphoma, known as mycosis fungoides and spent the years before the diagnosis dealing with rashes on his hands and feet. Dennis has been in remission for close to three years but the battle he faces may not be over. "The unfortunate reality of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is there's no cure and Mike deals with it on a daily basis, wondering when it’s going to come back. His doctors have told him it's going to come back and we're just waiting to see if that happens," Peavy said.

Bayer plans to appeal two of the verdicts

Claiming that the "punitive damages are unconstitutionally excessive and that legal and evidentiary errors influenced the trials," Bayer plans to appeal two of the verdicts. NBC 7 received the following statement from Bayer in response to the the latest verdict: "We respectfully disagree with the jury's adverse verdict, though it found in favor of the company on two of the four claims, and believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this unfounded verdict overturned and the unconstitutionally excessive damage award eliminated or reduced, given that there were significant and reversible legal and evidentiary errors made during this trial. We have a winning record in the Roundup litigation – having won nine of the last twelve cases at trial – and have resolved the majority of claims filed in this litigation." According to Reuters, Bayer settled most Roundup claims against it in 2020 for up to $10.9 billion but still faces close to 40,000 Roundup-related lawsuits. Visit EvilBayer.com for more stories about Roundup-related lawsuits. Watch the following video about Monsanto losing a billion-dollar verdict. This video is from the Natural News channel on Brighteon.com.

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Bayer plans to appeal two of the verdicts

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