A San Bernardino County Superior Court lawsuit against Bayer culminated in a verdict on Thursday, with the jury finding that widely-used weedkiller Roundup was not the cause of a woman’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a Reuters article by Tom Hals published Thursday evening said. The new signifies the second straight personal injury suit decided by trial in Bayer’s favor.
The plaintiff reportedly filed suit after developing cancer, alleging that her exposure to Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate between 1985 and 2017 caused the disease. The lawsuit stated several tort law causes of action including negligence and failure to warn.
According to the docket, the jury returned the verdict after a segmented video conference trial. Reuters reported that the plaintiff intends to appeal. “Despite everyone’s best efforts, it was impossible to try a coherent case via Zoom with our schedule,” the woman’s attorney, Fletch Trammell, said in a statement reprinted in the article.
For its part, and according to the news outlet, Monsanto said the decision was supported by the evidence. Bayer AG has reportedly faced myriad lawsuits since it acquired Monsanto in 2018. Reuters noted that it has spent billions settling approximately 96,000 of about 125,000 Roundup-cancer suits. Relatedly, a securities case against Bayer recently survived dismissal after a California judge found that the plaintiffs made a threshold showing that the company lied about the liability posed by the acquisition, and principally, lawsuits like the instant one.
The company still hopes to erase two of the three previous verdicts rendered against it, however, including one Bayer has pressed the Supreme Court to review. Reuters commented that if the nation’s high court rules favorably, it could put an end to all Roundup-related cancer suits.
