Bayer Must Pay $2BN To Couple In Monsanto Cancer Trial, Jury Rules

[appalachiablue]

Source: The Guardian

17.32 EDT. California jury on Monday awarded more than $2bn to a couple who claimed Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused their cancer, marking the third consecutive US jury verdict against the company in litigation over the chemical.

The jury in San Francisco superior court in Oakland said the company was liable for plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod’s contracting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a spokeswoman for the couple said.

It awarded $18m in compensatory and $1bn in punitive damages to Alva Pilliod and $37m in compensatory and $1bn in punitive damages to his wife, Alberta Pilliod.

The jury found Roundup had been defectively designed, that the company failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk and that the company acted negligently.

Bayer, which bought Roundup-maker Monsanto last year for $63bn, faces more than 13,400 US lawsuits over the herbicide’s alleged cancer risk. -More...


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/13/monsanto-cancer-trial-bayer-roundup-couple

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[SansACause]

1. Utter horeshit.

This is how the anti-vaccination movement got started: insurance fraud.

[Perseus]

2. Can you explain why you think it is insurance fraud?

And its relationship with the anti-vaccination movement?

[ToxMarz]

6. Yeah, kind of confusing isn't it

[lagomorph777]

21. Monsanto had quite a powerful team of enforcers here at DU a couple of years ago.

Even mentioning the name Monsanto could get you flagged.

I wonder if they're back?

[walkingman]

5. Not sure what you mean by "insurance fraud" but Monsanto is a sorry company in so many ways.

[mopinko]

7. yeah, i am not real confident in the ability of the american jury system

to sort out the science of all this.

i would like to see monsanto held responsible for any damage they have done, but not likin the lynch mob feel of these court cases.

[watoos]

17. Are you serious?

Do you think this case is the end of it? The guy in France who got cancer from Roundup took 7 years to get his award and I think the appeal isn't over yet.

What is the value of a life in your opinion?

I worked for Owens Illinois that was affiliated with Owens Corning that made asbestos. Owens knew the dangers of asbestos but sold it anyway. Even Hitler knew the dangers of asbestos so kept his workers protected from it.

[mopinko]

26. my faith in the average american has bottomed out.

and i never had much in lawyers.
i hate to see issues like this played out in court. it is not the right venue to find scientific truth.

[SansACause]

31. talcum powder

There is less connection between Roundup and cancer than there is talcum powder and cancer. It's all complete horseshit. American juries are intentionally made up of people who have no critical thinking skills. The anti-vaxxer crowd came out of the ungodly amounts awarded for breast implants in the 1980s. All we're seeing with the talcum powder and Roundup lawsuits is a continuation of insurance fraud.

[Pisces]

14. I think you should test it by making a roundup milkshake and drinking it to see if its horseshit

[watoos]

18. Maybe he does Roundup commercials on TV?

[KT2000]

3. Good to see this

This product was marketed with false information - can't harm people because it acts upon pathways that humans do not have. But they do.
It was supposed to be a miracle product.
Why Bayer bought Monsanto is a real mystery to me.

[angrychair]

28. I would suspect

They wanted their seed patent library.

Monsanto was very good at creating slight modifications to a seed, in effect creating a GMO (not really, the change was often so slight it was genetically innocuous) but enough to get a patent and create a seed brand for their new corn, rice or soy beans, than making sure their seed was the only one farmers could buy.

They were monetizing and dominating the seed business in a way no one every thought possible.

[Botany]

4. The damage done to the supportive capacity of our ecosystem by non native invasive plants is a ....

..... million times worse than glyphosate.

[JudyM]

8. If only we could sue for environmental/ecosystem damage.

[mopinko]

9. this

i dont trust these rubes to be a good arbiter of science.

[Botany]

10. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

n/t

[mopinko]

11. yup.

getting a little sick of being in a vice on this kind of shit.

[Botany]

13. I can show you ecosystems that I have restored in part by using glyphosate

Thousands of native grasses, flowers, legumes, native pollinators, native birds,
monarchs, ground nesting bees, snakes, humming birds, and other critters too.
It provides habitat for lots of good things, fixes carbon, and helps rain and snowfall
to work their moisture into the ground instead of running off.

Or do people want it to go back into being a "green yet dead" area ... overrun w/bush
honeysuckle, pear trees, burning bush, and the green cancers from our nursery & landscape
industries?

[watoos]

19. Yup, you can grow GMO food in dead soil,

the food has no nutritious value. I like to see eyes grow out from my potatoes whereas a GMO potato never goes bad.

Yeah, our golf course sprayed Roundup on large areas of rough. It killed everything for about 2 years, now there are weeds coming back. You may be right, I did see some geese pecking at something in those dead zones, er ecosystem.

[Botany]

27. Please

BTW soil by definition is never dead. Soil is a living multi complex structure.

BTW GMO crops do have nutritional value.

BTW Glyphosate will not kill everything for 2 years.

BTW I have done ecosystem restoration work for >20 years.

[Evolve Dammit]

12. Bayer. Manufacturer (and supplier?) of the gas Nazi Germany used in it's genocide.

[lagomorph777]

22. Tzyklone

[rdking647]

15. this will get tossed on appeal.

2 reason.

the supreme court has already banned punitive damages that high

there is no real evidence that roundup causes cancer.
like it or not thats a scientific fact

[Perseus]

16. There seems to be some evidence that is does cause cancer

[link:https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html|

There are some other articles, one from the Scientific American, that provides mixed reviews, some scientists believe it does and some just say that the data is a bit thin and needs more investigation to the cause to humans, but they do agree that tests in the lab have shown mice and other mammals have been affected by cancer after exposure to the main ingredient of Roundup.

[watoos]

20. I eat organic so I don't really care.

I know it is no guarantee that my food is free from poison but I have a better chance. Also organic food tastes so much better than the Roundup laced GMO food.

[lagomorph777]

23. +1 Organic tastes better. Even ignoring whether it's safer or more nutritious.

I just wish Monsanto would quit contaminating organic crops with their GMO crap.

[KT2000]

30. most neighborhoods, parks

and school grounds are drenched in glyphosate. It's used where you find patches of greenery, say in a parking lot for a business. We breathe it in the air, also track it into our homes. Use on food is just one use for this product. Everyone is exposed to this product.

[NickB79]

24. Every time I hear court cases like this

I think of the jury in Italy about 10 yr ago that held several seismologists liable for not predicting an earthquake that killed numerous people. Of course, that's impossible to do, and the seismologists were later found not guilty on appeal.

[NickB79]

25. Well, so much for no-till farming

Without glyphosate, it's almost impossible to run a no-till field; you quickly get overrun by weeds.

Back to old-fashioned plow and till, along with all the destruction that entails.

[Bayard]

29. I have to admit...

I use the cheap generic version.

The soil here is mostly hard red clay, and you have to amend it like crazy to grow anything (except weeds). I have very large gardens, and I finally got sick of spending all my time weeding, never being able to actually enjoy my gardens.

I would think, squirting weeds with a little pump-up sprayer is safer than major industrial use.