Monsanto resists caretaker’s lawsuit
Benicia groundskeeper says firm concealed hazards of herbicide
The lawyer for a cancer patient suing Monsanto Co. over its weed-killer that he sprayed as a school groundskeeper told a San Francisco jury Tuesday that the chemical giant had knowingly exposed thousands of Americans to a dangerous product, and it was time to pay up.
Monsanto concealed evidence of the hazards of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, attacked the international agency that classified it as a likely cause of cancer, and refused to put a cancer warning on the label, said Brent Wisner, attorney for plaintiff Dewayne “Lee” Johnson during closing arguments at the Superior Court trial.
The failure to add a warning label was “a choice that reflects reckless disregard for human health,” Wisner said. “Today is their day of reckoning.”
But Monsanto’s lawyer said independent scientific research has provided “overwhelming evidence that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has regulated the herbicide since the 1970s and repeatedly concluded it was not dangerous, attorney George Lombardi told the jury. And even though one of Johnson’s doctors asked the groundskeeper’s employer to let him stop spraying the her-
bicide, Lombardi said, none of his treating physicians — who included cancer experts at Stanford — believed glyphosate caused his illness.
After four weeks of testimony, mostly from opposing groups of experts, jurors begin their deliberations on Wednesday.
Johnson, 46, of Vallejo, was a groundskeeper and pestcontrol manager for the Benicia Unified School District from 2012 until May 2016. He was diagnosed with nonHodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2014, and with what his lawyers described as a more aggressive form of the cancer in March 2015.
His suit is the first of about 4,000 nationwide to go to trial against Monsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer. The company markets glyphosate as Roundup and, in higher concentrations, as Ranger Pro, the brand Johnson used most of the time at work.
In March 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. It remains legal in both the U.S. and Europe, however, and Lombardi said the EPA and regulators in Europe had reevaluated the chemical since March 2015 and found no reason to change their assessment.
Johnson testified that he wore protective clothing while spraying the herbicide from 50-gallon drums but was exposed to the chemical from wind gusts, and in a spill from a broken hose and a leak from a container.
He said he first noticed rashes on his skin in 2014 that did not respond to treatment. After his initial cancer diagnosis, he called the Monsanto hotline, described his condition and asked if glyphosate was harmful. The person at the other end of the line promised that someone would call him back, but no one ever did. Johnson said he made another call in the spring of 2015 and the same thing happened.
“They wouldn’t even call Mr. Johnson back and tell him you should stop spraying,” said Wisner, his lawyer. By the time Johnson told the school district in January 2016 that he would no longer use the herbicide, Wisner said, it had become “his death sentence.”
Lombardi acknowledged that someone should have called Johnson back, but said it would have made no difference — the company would not have advised him to stop spraying, and his own doctors had cleared him to keep working in December 2015.
Johnson has lesions all over his body and even on his eyelids — “every time he blinks he’s in pain,” Wisner said. He said Johnson “won’t make it till 2020 absent a miracle.” An oncologist testifying for Monsanto said Johnson could live for decades.
If the jury finds Monsanto responsible for Johnson’s cancer, the two sides have agreed that he should receive $2.53 million in damages for lost wages, medical expenses and other costs. Wisner asked for an additional $37 million in damages for pain, suffering and emotional distress — $1 million for each year of Johnson’s life expectancy.
Jurors could also award punitive damages if they find that the company intentionally or recklessly caused harm. Wisner asked for $373 million, which he said would equal the interest Monsanto now collects on its $3.1 billion in holdings.