Bayer has announced that they will settle approximately 75% of the approximately 125,000 lawsuits from plaintiffs who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma due to Roundup exposure. The German pharmaceutical giant has been plagued with litigation regarding the world’s most used herbicide since it purchased Monsanto in 2018. Bayer issued a press release on Wednesday with the details of this move.

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The company will make a payment of $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to resolve the current Roundup™ litigation, including an allowance expected to cover unresolved claims, and $1.25 billion to support a separate class agreement to address potential future litigation.”

Bayer

Only three cases against Roundup have gone to trial. Each trial ended in a substantial decision for the plaintiffs, with monetary awards of $289 million, $80 million, and $2 billion. The newly announced settlements are subject to approval by Judge Vince Chhabria, who has previously upheld jury verdicts against the company and was also responsible for reducing $80 million in damages to $25 million. These previous jury verdicts are not part of the settlement agreement, and Bayer has indicated they will continue to appeal those cases.

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Bayer AG has reached verbal agreements with 50,000 to 85,000 plaintiffs in Roundup cancer lawsuits in the United States. The agreements have not yet been signed, and some of them will need the approval of California Judge Vince Chhabria, the judge responsible for reducing an $80 million award to $25 million. Chhabria suspended a trial scheduled for March 23rd without setting a new date, and brought in settlement negotiator Kenneth Feinberg.

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There are talks with various lawyers around the nation who have significant inventories of Roundup cases. I’m optimistic we can reach a comprehensive settlement of this litigation.”

Kenneth Feinberg, mediator

These negotiations represent a significant chunk of the 125,000 of the Roundup lawsuits in California and Missouri (where Monsanto headquarters were located), though Bayer has only acknowledged about half of those. Settlements are preferable to high-exposure jury trials, like the three California cases last year that resulted in significant awards against the pharmaceutical and life sciences company. Roundup litigation has plagued the German company since it purchased Monsanto in 2018.

Bayer has said official settlements will likely be announced in June.

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Sources:

Even during the coronavirus pandemic, German company Bayer has shown increases in earnings in its first quarter. Despite a rise in earnings, Bayer is using the current economic downturn to avoid paying for glyphosate damages. In a statement released last Monday Bayer says the mediation process has been significantly slowed down due to the coronavirus.

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Bayer credits its rise in earnings to those stockpiling drugs due to the pandemic. Despite the rise in earnings, the operating cash flow has decreased from 1 billion euros in the previous year to 189 million due to settlements.

The company will consider a deal only if it is financially reasonable and puts in place a mechanism to resolve potential future claims efficiently. This applies now more than ever,”

Werner Baumann, Cheif Executive

The number of plaintiffs in the U.S blaming glyphosate for cancer has risen 52,500 since its 48,600 in February. Bayer continues to deny claims that Roundup or glyphosate, the active ingredient, causes cancer, citing several independent studies that show it’s safe for human use.

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Source:

• Bayer more stringent in glyphosate settlement talks due to downturn– Reuters

Glyphosate was added to California’s Proposition 65 list of carcinogens in July 2017. Products containing Glyphosate, like Monsanto’s RoundUp, were supposed to have warning labels on the packaging that stated potential cancer risks. The glyphosate cancer warnings were scheduled to be on the packaging of glyphosate products in summer of 2018 But in 2018 Monsanto challenged the law and a federal judge temporarily banned California’s plans to add cancer warning labels on glyphosate-based products. And now the EPA has stated they will “no longer approve product labels claiming glyphosate is known to cause cancer.”

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The EPA will not allow labels that indicate a link between glyphosate and cancer. Registrants selling products that contain glyphosate have 90 days from August 7th to show compliance removing the warning.

The State of California’s much criticized Proposition 65 has led to misleading labeling requirements for products, like glyphosate, because it misinforms the public about the risks they are facing.”

EPA Statement

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This means that while Costco bans glyphosate and Bayer/Monsanto is facing more than 10,000 lawsuits and losing millions of dollars in those lawsuits (maybe billions soon) for the damage glyphosate can do to one’s health, it won’t have a warning label, but coffee and supplements sold in California will have cancer warnings labels.

As most already know, in what may go down as the worst acquisition in the history of business, Bayer bought Monsanto last year for $63 billion. While Monsanto has become Bayer’s biggest mistake, you’ve got to hand it to Monsanto for knowing when to sell. Since the buyout, Bayer has been embroiled in litigation, with plaintiffs winning lawsuits showing that glyphosate likely caused their cancer.

Mom’s Across America reported that on January 18:

Elizabeth Desiree of Washington state posted on Facebook that she just got a call from an employee at Costco and he told her that Costco would no longer be selling Roundup. She had written him a letter and he was calling her back. I was excited but reserved my excitement. There is so much fake news these days. I called the headquarters, and after two days of messages and calls, I did finally confirm with three people that Costco was not ordering Roundup or any glyphosate-based herbicides for the incoming spring shipments. They would not be selling it in any stores, all across America. This is HUGE! How fantastic! One employee mentioned that they had looked into organic alternatives first and were happy with the results. More than one employee mentioned the lawsuit (Johnson V Monsanto) for part of the reasoning. They said they just felt like it was the right thing to do.

Mom’s Across America

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Costco has not released a statement. But the company has been a progressive leader in many respects. They have been known for taking better care of their employees and their environmental initiatives. In 2014 Huffington Post article, Costco was ranked second to Google on employee satisfaction. And they are one of the largest sellers in the country of organic foods, and they support farmers that are transitioning to organic growing practices.

Considering the amount of food Costco sells, this should amount to a considerable loss in revenue for the makers of RoundUp, not to mention other stores that will likely follow suit.

Two weeks ago a California jury awards two plaintiffs $2.055 billion dollars in damages. The jury awarded $2 billion in punitive damages and $55 million in compensatory damages. This is Bayer’s third loss in court from lawsuits over glyphosate. The first judgment was reported in August of 2018, where judges awarded $289 million in damages (later reduced to $78 million). The second happened in March of this year, where a San Francisco jury found in favor of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman to the tune of $80 million in damages.

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The damages award will probably be reduced thanks to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that limit the punitive to compensatory damages ratio at 9:1.

Bayer is now looking forward to more than 13,400 pending U.S. lawsuits seeking damages from glyphosate use, and that number is likely to keep rising for some time.

Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, the groundskeeper who was awarded $289 million in a civil suit against Bayer’s Monsanto, has agreed to accept the reduced award of $78 million. Dewayne went to trial on the grounds that the weedkiller Roundup caused his cancer. The jury awarded him $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos cut the award by $211 million, stating that punitive damages at more than seven times the size of the compensatory award are not legally justified.

In enforcing due process limits, the Court does not sit as a replacement for a jury but only as a check on arbitrary awards.”

Johnson could have demanded a new trial, but instead, he accepted the reduced award of $78 million. Doctors report he has very little time left to live. Johnson accepted the lower amount in a desire to reach “a final resolution within his lifetime,” spokeswoman Robin McCall told The Associated Press.

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Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, was 42, working as a groundskeeper and pest-control manager in Northern California, when he developed a rash that led to a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in August 2014. Court records say duties at work included mixing and spraying hundreds of gallons of Roundup, Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller.

His attorney disagreed with the judge’s settlement reduction, but Johnson will accept the lower amount in hopes of achieving “a final resolution within his lifetime,” spokeswoman Robin McCall told The Associated Press.

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Bayer acquired Monsanto in June. In an emailed statement Bayer spokesperson Charla Lord told NPR:

The Court’s decision to reduce the punitive damage award by more than $200 million is a step in the right direction, but we continue to believe that the liability verdict and damage awards are not supported by the evidence at trial or the law and plan to file an appeal with the California Court of Appeal.

There is an extensive body of research on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides, including more than 800 rigorous registration studies required by EPA, European and other regulators, that confirms that these products are safe when used as directed.”

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Glyphosate is one of the most widely used and well-known herbicides in the U.S. Reuters reports that Bayer faces about 8,000 more lawsuits on the herbicide.

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.

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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.