Jury backs man who claims Roundup weed killer caused cancer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)—A San Francisco jury Aug. 10 ordered agribusiness giant Monsanto to pay $289 million to a former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, saying the company’s popular Roundup weed killer contributed to his disease.

Dewayne Johnson’s lawsuit was the first of thousands of cases filed in state and federal courts alleging that Roundup causes cancer, which Monsanto denies.

Johnson said he hoped his verdict would bolster the other cases.

“This case is way bigger than me,” Johnson said during a press conference in the San Francisco office of his attorney, R. Brent Wisner, after the verdict. “I hope it gets the attention that it needs.”

Johnson declined to answer reporters’ questions.

Jurors in California superior court agreed the product contributed to Johnson’s cancer and 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.

“We were finally able to show the jury the secret, internal Monsanto documents proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer,” Wisner said in a statement to the National Law Journal. “Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to require labeling, we are proud that an independent jury followed the evidence and used its voice to send a message to Monsanto that its years of deception regarding Roundup is over and that they should put consumer safety first over profits.”

Environmental groups were effusive in praise of the verdict. For example, Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement, “Monsanto made Roundup the oxycontin of pesticides and now the addiction and damage they caused have come home to roost. This won’t cure DeWayne Lee Johnson’s cancer, but it will send a strong message to a renegade company.”

Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge said the company would appeal the verdict. In an emailed statement to National Law Journal, Partridge said, “We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family. Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews—and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world—support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer. We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective and safe tool for farmers and others.”

Monsanto, based in St. Louis and soon will lose its name as it merges with Bayer, faces about 4,000 lawsuits over Roundup. About 150 suits have been coordinated in San Francisco Superior Court, one of which is Johnson’s case, brought in 2016.

Monsanto has denied a link between the active ingredient in Roundup—glyphosate—and cancer, saying hundreds of studies have established that the weed killer is safe.

Johnson used Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, his lawyers said. He sprayed large quantities from a 50-gallon tank attached to a truck, and during gusty winds, the product would cover his face, said Brent Wisner, one of his attorneys.

Once, when a hose broke, the weed killer soaked his entire body.

Johnson read the label and even contacted the company after developing a rash but was never warned it could cause cancer, Wisner said. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014 at age 42.

“The simple fact is he is going to die. It’s just a matter of time,” Wisner told the jury in his opening statement last month.

But George Lombardi, an attorney for Monsanto, said non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma takes years to develop, so Johnson’s cancer must have started well before he began working at the school district.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Roundup’s active ingredient is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.

However, the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer.

Senior field editor Larry Dreiling contributed to this story.