Today (Friday, August 10th) a California jury found Monsanto liable for causing cancer and ordered the company to pay $289 million in damages. The jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court of California deliberated for three days. The lawsuit was filed by Dewayne Johnson, who alleges that the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, are responsible for his cancer.
Johnson’s doctors testified that he is probably not going to live past 2020. Johnson is 46. He worked for a California county school system where he reportedly applied the weed killer up to 30 times per year for pest-control.
This was the first lawsuit to make it to trial that alleges that glyphosate does cause cancer. Monsanto was recently bought by Bayer AG for $65 billion. The German conglomerate faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits in the United States.
Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering
The jury awarded Dewayne Johnson $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. Dwayne was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October of 2014, and with a “more aggressive form of the cancer” in March 2015.
BREAKING: Monsanto didn't adequately warn of the danger of weed killer Roundup and must pay $289 million to a man who claims it caused his terminal cancer, a California jury says. https://t.co/qb6Q0dxhLH
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 10, 2018
Monsanto says that decades of scientific studies have shown glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, to be safe for human use. But studies, including a brand new one, show otherwise:
Exposure to environmentally relevant doses of a glyphosate-based herbicide during pregnancy has been found not only to impair female fertility in rats…Argentinian researchers tested the glyphosate-based herbicide – one commonly used in Argentina – in pregnant female rats at two doses, which were added to their food. The rats were mated and dosed from the 9th day after conception until their pups were weaned. This first generation of offspring and their offspring in turn (second generation) were followed and monitored for reproductive effects.”
Johnson’s case was filed in 2016. The case was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his cancer.
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