Judge reduces jury award against Bayer Roundup to $78.5M
German conglomerate faces thousands more lawsuits tied to herbicide’s alleged effects
A California judge on Monday reduced by more than $200 million (U.S.) a jury verdict linking Bayer AG’s Roundup weed killer to cancer but upheld the jury’s findings that the company acted with malice.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos said the $250 million in punitive damages awarded by the jury must be slimmed down to match the $39.25 million in compensatory damages that the jury found appropriate. If the plaintiff agrees to the reduction by Dec. 7, no new trial is needed.
Bayer shares dropped on the news, down 6.7% in early trading Tuesday, as investors and analysts had been hoping the judge would go even further, reducing also compensatory damages or ordering a new trial. “Clearly this topic isn’t going to go away,” UBS analyst Michael Leuchten wrote in a note to investors. Bayer inherited thousands of Roundup-related lawsuits in its recently closed acquisition of Monsanto Co. and has worked to assuage investor concerns about potential liability from the litigation.
The decision is the latest turn in the first Roundup case to go to trial, which resulted in an August verdict in favour of a groundskeeper who said prolonged use of glyphosate-based herbicides caused his nonHodgkin lymphoma.
Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, has become a go-to product for farmers, landscapers and homeowners because of its ability to shrivel dozens of different weed species.
The ruling on Monday diverges from a tentative decision the judge reached earlier this month to completely throw out the $250 million in punitive damages and order a new trial. In the11-page ruling released on Monday, the judge said that “regardless of the level of reprehensibility of Monsanto’s conduct, the constitutionally required ratio is one to one” between the two types of damages.
Bayer said it would appeal the verdict. The company had asked the court to overturn the award, arguing that attorneys for plaintiff Dewayne Johnson relied on flimsy scientific evidence to prove a link to his cancer and that they had swayed the jurors with overly emotional and speculative arguments.
“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,” the company said in a statement.
Attorneys for Mr. Johnson said they believe the reduction in punitive damages is unwarranted and are weighing their options, but “are happy the jury’s voice was acknowledged by the court, even if slightly muted.”
Several jurors wrote letters to the court in the wake of the tentative ruling, urging the judge not to set aside their decision and saying that they dutifully followed instructions.
In interviews before the judge’s final ruling, two of those jurors, financial adviser Gary Kitahata and residential contractor Robert Howard, said they decided to award the $250 mil- lion in punitive damages after considering what would be a sufficient deterrent for a company of Monsanto’s size.
Monsanto attorneys argued that comments made by the plaintiff’s counsel, Brent Wisner, during closing arguments inflamed the jury. They included comparisons to the tobacco industry and a remark that Monsanto executives were waiting to pop champagne in their boardroom if they won the case.
Mr. Kitahata said it is absurd to suggest that the remarks influenced them. “Obviously he was being theatrical, but that’s what attorneys do,” Mr. Kitahata said.
Mr. Howard said Mr. Wisner’s comments were quickly brushed aside in the deliberation room, as jurors did indepth reviews of every witness presented to them. Many of the jurors have stayed in close contact, as their verdict is dissected, and had attended an Oct. 10 hearing before Judge Bolanos.
During that hearing, Judge Bolanos chided Mr. Wisner for his remarks in the closing, saying she had ordered him not to make any references to champagne in the boardroom, but “then in front of the jury, you disregarded my order.” Mr. Wisner, a Los Angeles-based attorney with Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman PC, disputed that he disobeyed her instructions.
Michael Miller, another attorney for the plaintiff, said in court that Monsanto dismissed 27 potential jurors on grounds they appeared biased against the company and ended up with a jury “free from passion, free from prejudice.” Only after the jurors issued a verdict against the company, he argued, did Monsanto say a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Monsanto invented glyphosate and began marketing it in 1974, and about two decades later introduced the first crops genetically engineered to survive the spray. “Roundup Ready” crops simplified farming and formed the basis for Monsanto’s world-leading business in seeds, which made about $11billion in sales last year.
Glyphosate’s safety came under scrutiny after the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, in 2015 classified glyphosate as likely having the potential to cause cancer. Monsanto and other agricultural groups pushed back, but the classification prompted a wave of lawsuits and regulatory challenges in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.