An update this weekend at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Online reported that, “A jury’s $289 million award to a former school groundskeeper who said Monsanto’s Roundup left him dying of cancer will bolster thousands of pending cases and open the door for countless people who blame their suffering on the weedkiller, the man’s lawyers said.
“‘I’m glad to be here to be able to help in a cause that’s way bigger than me,’ Dewayne Johnson said at a news conference Friday after the verdict was announced.
“Johnson, 46, alleges that heavy contact with the herbicide caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The state Superior Court jury agreed that Roundup contributed to Johnson’s cancer and Monsanto should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard.”
The Post-Dispatch article noted that, “Jurors in state Superior Court agreed that the product had contributed to Johnson’s cancer and that the company should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard. Johnson’s attorneys sought and won $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million of the $373 million they wanted in punitive damages.”
“Monsanto denies that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, causes cancer and says decades of scientific studies have shown the chemical to be safe for human use.
“The company, a Creve Coeur-based unit of Bayer AG after a $62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, said it would appeal the verdict,” the article said.
