£1.5bn for US couple who say their cancer was caused by Roundup
A COUPLE who claimed the weedkiller Roundup caused their cancer have been awarded £1.5 billion by a US jury.
Alva and Alberta Pilliod, both 76, told a court in California they had been battling non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for nine years and laid the blame on the world’s most popular weedkiller.
They used the product for 30 years, spraying it on their lawns and paths without ever worrying about its effect on their health.
Although their cancer is in remission, the jury ordered German chemicals giant Bayer, which produces Roundup, to pay each of them $1 billion (£770 million) in punitive damages as well as $55 million (£42 million) in compensatory damages.
Jurors said Roundup, containing the herbicide glyphosate, had been defectively designed and the company failed to warn of its alleged cancer risk.
The garden product is widely available in Britain, and a glyphosatefree version was also launched here last year.
Bayer, the inventor of Aspirin, faces US lawsuits from 13,400 plaintiffs over Roundup’s possible link with cancer. Shares in the company fell as much as 5 per cent yesterday, even though the huge damages award is likely to be reduced substantially due to Supreme Court rulings that generally limit the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages to a ratio of 9:1.
Bayer acquired Roundup last year as part of a £51 billion takeover of US rival Monsanto, which developed glyphosate in the 1970s. Bayer denied the Pilliods’ allegations and insists the weedkiller is safe to use. Saying it will appeal, the company called the Oakland jury’s decision ‘excessive and unjustifiable’ and said the Pilliods had histories of illnesses that are linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Mrs Pilliod said the cancer ‘changed our lives for ever’, adding: ‘ We couldn’t do things we used to be able to do, and we resent them for that.’
Brent Wisner, the couple’s lawyer, said: ‘The jury saw for themselves internal company documents demonstrating that, from day one, Monsanto has never had any interest in finding out whether Roundup is safe. Instead of investing in sound science, they invested millions in attacking science that threatened their business agenda.’
Eco-campaigners welcomed the verdict. Ken Cook, of the Environmental Working Group, said: ‘The cloud hanging over Bayer will only grow bigger and darker, as more juries hear how Monsanto manipulated its own research, colluded with regulators and intimidated scientists to keep secret the cancer risks from glyphosate.’
In March, a jury awarded £60 million to a Californian man after finding that Roundup had caused his cancer. Last August, another man in the state was awarded £223 million for the same reason.
The World Health Organisation concluded in 2015 that glyphosate probably causes cancer, but the US Environmental Protection Agency says the chemical is safe.