A jury in Georgia, United States, has ordered the multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer to pay 2.1 billion dollars in compensation after the herbicide Roundup, formulated with glyphosate, was identified as the cause of cancer in a customer.
The ruling assigns 2 billion dollars to punitive damages and 100 million to compensatory damages, as stated by the legal firms Arnold & Itkin and Kline & Specter, who represented the plaintiff.
History of lawsuits against Roundup
- Bayer, which acquired Roundup following the purchase of Monsanto in 2018 for 63 billion dollars, has faced serious legal issues since then.
- To date, the pharmaceutical company has allocated over 10 billion dollars to settle lawsuits related to this product. Despite winning 17 out of 25 cases against them, they still face 60,000 similar lawsuits.
- To handle future litigations, the company has established a 5.9 billion dollar fund.
Glyphosate under scrutiny
The controversy surrounding Roundup escalated after a warning from the World Health Organization (WHO) that classified glyphosate as potentially carcinogenic. This statement led to significant economic losses for Bayer, totaling 2.941 billion euros in 2023 and 2.552 billion in 2024.
Although Bayer has restricted the sales of Roundup for domestic use, the product remains one of the most widely used herbicides in the United States and Australia, keeping the risk of new cancer-related cases alive.
Bayer’s response and the product’s future
The pharmaceutical company has announced its intention to appeal the ruling, defending that Roundup is an effective product with economic and environmental benefits.
According to Bayer, glyphosate is one of the most researched herbicides globally, supporting its safety.
Bayer’s conviction in Philadelphia in 2024
One of the closest precedents to the Georgia sentence occurred in January 2024. Back then, the multinational Bayer was ordered to pay 2.25 billion dollars to a man who sued the Monsanto subsidiary, the manufacturer of the herbicide Roundup, for contracting cancer which he attributes to the use of this pesticide. This was determined by a jury.
This time, the lawsuit was filed by John McKivison, a 49-year-old, who appeared in the Philadelphia courts to claim that the non-Hodgkin lymphoma he was diagnosed with was a consequence of using the herbicide in his field, as reported by The Washington Post.
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