Monsanto to pay man $289M US in Roundup weed killer lawsuit
Jury awards dying school groundskeeper money in cancer case
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco jury on Friday ordered agribusiness giant Monsanto to pay $289 million to a former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, saying the company’s popular Roundup weed killer contributed to his disease.
Dewayne Johnson’s lawsuit was the first of thousands filed in state and federal courts alleging that Roundup causes cancer, which Monsanto denies.
Johnson hopes his verdict would bolster the other cases.
Jurors in California superior court agreed the product contributed to his cancer and the company should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard. Johnson’s attorneys sought and won $39 million US in compensatory damages and $250 million of the $373 million they wanted in punitive damages.
“This jury found Monsanto acted with malice and oppression because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Johnson lawyer.
Monsanto has denied a link between the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — and cancer, saying hundreds of studies have established that the weed killer is safe.
Monsanto spokesperson Scott Partridge said the company will appeal. He said scientific studies and two government agencies have concluded that Roundup does not cause cancer.
“We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family. We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective, and safe tool for farmers and others,” he said.
Johnson used Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, his lawyers said. He sprayed large quantities from a 50-gallon tank attached to a truck, and during gusty winds the product would cover his face, said Brent Wisner, one of his lawyers. Once, when a hose broke, the weed killer soaked his entire body.
Johnson read the label and even contacted the company after developing a rash, but was never warned it could cause cancer, Wisner said. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014 at age 42.
“The simple fact is he is going to die. It’s just a matter of time,” Wisner told the jury in his opening statement last month.
But George Lombardi, a lawyer for Monsanto, said non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma takes years to develop, so Johnson’s cancer must have started before he began working at the schools.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Roundup’s active ingredient is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.
However, the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer.