Bayer headquarters.Photo:Humbert/Getty
Humbert/Getty
A jury has ordered Bayer to pay $332 million dollars in damages to a man who says the company’s Roundup product caused his cancer, multiple reports cite.
According toABC News, Carlsbad, Calif. native Michael Dennis, 57, was diagnosed with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020 and is currently in remission.
On Tuesday, the San Diego Superior Court jury determined that the weed killer product’s active ingredient, glyphosate, was related to the cancer.
A spokesperson for Bayer toldReutersthat the verdict includes compensatory damages of $7 million and the other $325 million in punitive damages.
The rep added that out of four legal claims, the jury favored Bayer on two of them, stating that they had not been found negligent and the product was not defectively designed. The jury did determine, however, that Bayer had failed to warn of the risks of using the product.
In 2020 alone, the company has settled up to $10.9 billion in Roundup-related claims and still has nearly 40,000 more to go.
Bloombergnotes that Bayer has reserved 16 billion in total to allocate to Roundup litigation costs.
Bayer shared this statement with PEOPLE:
“We respectfully disagree with the jury’s verdict and believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this unfounded verdict overturned and the unconstitutionally excessive damage award eliminated or reduced, given that there were significant and reversible legal and evidentiary errors made during this trial. We have a winning record in the Roundup litigation – having won nine of the last twelve cases at trial – and having resolved the majority of claims in this litigation.”
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“Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body’s immune system,” theAmerican Cancer Societyexplains.
In 2018, Dewayne Johnson, a former groundskeeper in California, wasawarded $289 million in damages(later reduced to $21.5 million) after a jury ruled Bayer’s product was the reason he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer saidin 2015that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans."
source: people.com
