Bay Area couple’s $86 million jury award in Roundup pesticide case stands

Roundup

California’s highest court rejected on Wednesday a challenge by Monsanto Co.’s to $86.2 million in damages to a couple who developed cancer after spraying the company’s Roundup weed-killer in their yards for three decades.

The state Supreme Court’s denial of review upholds an appeals court’s ruling in favor of Alva and Alberta Pilliod.

The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco found in a 2-1 ruling in August that Monsanto was at fault for knowingly marketing a product whose active ingredient, glyphosate, could be dangerous.

Monsanto’s parent company, Bayer, said it disagreed with the high court’s decision.

“We continue to stand strongly behind the safety of Roundup, a position supported by assessments of expert regulators worldwide as well as the overwhelming weight of four

Bayer Catches A Break On $2 Billion Roundup Verdict

Roundup

A California judge on Thursday reduced a $2 billion jury verdict, slashing the award for a couple who blamed Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based weed killer, Roundup, for their cancer to $86.7 million.

Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith of the California Superior Court in Oakland said the jury’s billion-dollar punitive damage awards were excessive and unconstitutional, but rejected Bayer’s request to strike the punitive award outright.

Under Smith’s final order, California couple Alva and Alberta Pilliod would receive roughly $17 million in compensatory damages and $69 million in punitive damages, down from $55 million and $2 billion, respectively.

The plaintiffs still have to formally accept the reduced awards. Brent Wisner, a lawyer for the Pilliods, in a statement on Friday welcomed the decision.

“While we believe the

Monsanto ordered to pay $289 million in world’s first Roundup cancer trial

Roundup

A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a man who alleged the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer and ordered the company to pay a jaw-dropping $289 million in damages.

The case of school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Monsanto, a unit of Bayer AG following a $62.5 billion acquisition by the German conglomerate, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.

The jury at San Francisco’s Superior Court of California deliberated for three days before finding that Monsanto had failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers.

It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages.