Monsanto ordered to pay $289M in Roundup cancer case
Monsanto ordered to pay $286 million
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 hundreds of cases filed in state and federal courts alleging that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Monsanto denies.
Jurors in state Superior Court agreed the product contributed to Johnson’s cancer and the company should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard.
Monsanto has denied a link between the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — and cancer. Monsanto spokesman Scott Partridge said the company will appeal. Partridge said scientific studies and two government agencies have concluded that Roundup does not cause cancer.
“We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family,” Partridge said. “We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product.”
Johnson used Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, said Brent Wisner, one of his attorneys.
Johnson 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.
But George Lombardi, an attorney for Monsanto, said non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma takes years to develop, so Johnson’s cancer must have started well before he began working at the school district.
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.