Monsanto verdict cut to $86.7 million

An Alameda County judge on Thursday upheld a jury’s verdict that Monsanto’s widely used Roundup herbicide caused cancer in a Livermore couple, but reduced their damages from $2 billion to $86.7 million.

Evidence at the Oakland trial, though disputed, supports the jury’s conclusion that Roundup was “a substantial factor” in causing nonHodgkin’s lymphoma in both Alva and Alberta Pilliod, said Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith. She said the evidence also supported the jury’s finding that Monsanto had known the herbicide’s active ingredient, glyphosate, could be dangerous while the Pilliods were still using it and had failed to warn them.

Further, Smith said, there was clear evidence that Monsanto, after learning of the dangers, “made efforts to impede, discourage or distort scientific inquiry” by regulators who approved its use, “reprehensible” conduct that justifies punitive damages.

But she said the punitive damages in this case, $1 billion to each plaintiff, were much higher than the constitutional limits set by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court has said that those damages, intended to punish and deter misconduct, generally should be no more than four times the amount of damages awarded to compensate victims for their losses.

After reducing the Pilliods’ compensation for economic losses and pain and suffering from about $55 million to a little over $17 million, Smith set punitive damages at four times that amount, $69.4 million. The couple had anticipated the reduction, and their lawyer said the overall ruling was “a major victory.”

Although “the reduction in damages does not fairly capture the pain and suffering experienced by Alva and Alberta,” attorney Brent Wisner said in a statement, “the judge rejected every argument Monsanto raised and sustained a very substantial verdict.”

Monsanto’s parent company, the German pharmaceutical firm Bayer AG, said it would appeal.

The reduction in damages is “a step in the right direction,” the company said in a statement, but the verdict and damages “conflict with the extensive body of reliable science and conclusions of leading health regulators worldwide” that both Roundup and glyphosate are safe.

Alva Pilliod, 77, was diagnosed with nonHodgkin’s lymphoma, a sometimesfatal form of lymph cancer, in 2011, and Alberta Pilliod, 74, was diagnosed in 2015. They had used Roundup for more than 30 years to kill weeds on three properties they owned in the area, spraying it once a week for nine months out of the year. Doctors say their cancers are in remission but could recur.

Jurors awarded Alva Pilliod $18 million for past and future pain and suffering, and awarded his wife $34 million. Smith said Thursday that those damages exceeded the standards set by past cases for elderly plaintiffs with reduced life expectancy. She said Alberta Pilliod went through a longer period of intense and painful medical care than her husband, and her health is more impaired, but “reasonable” compensation would be $11 million for her and $6.1 million for him. Smith said jurors had also awarded excessive damages for medication that might be covered by insurance.

The verdict in May was the third by a Bay Area jury against Monsanto, which faces more than 13,000 suits nationwide by users of Roundup, the world’s bestselling herbicide, and related products.

A San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded $289 million last August to former school groundskeeper Dewayne “Lee” Johnson of Vallejo, who doctors say may have less than a year to live. A judge later reduced the award to $78.5 million. In March, a federal court jury in San Francisco awarded more than $80 million to Edwin Hardeman of Sonoma County, whose cancer is in remission. A judge has reduced that award to $25.2 million.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as a probable cause of human cancer in 2015. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and most regulatory bodies in Europe say it can be used safely. Lawyers for the Pilliods and other plaintiffs offered evidence that Monsanto was in close contact with the EPA during its review of the weed killer.