SAN JOSE, California – German chemicals multinational Bayer has suffered its third consecutive defeat in US litigation over cancer allegations involving weedkillers containing glyphosate, reported German news agency (dpa).
Jurors in a California state court in San Diego awarded a 57-year-old man a total of US$332 million in damages on Tuesday. Bayer said it believed it had strong arguments to prevail in an appeal.
Bayer also says it remains convinced glyphosate is safe.
The court awarded US$7 million in compensation and another US$325 million in punitive damages. Bayer called the verdict unfounded and the amount of damages unconstitutional.
After the verdict, Bayer said in a statement that “there were significant and reversible legal and evidentiary errors made during this trial”.
Juries in the United States regularly award large sums to plaintiffs, which judges often reduce later.
Bayer inherited the problems surrounding Roundup, the weedkiller containing glyphosate, in 2018 when the company acquired Monsanto for more than US$60 billion. That same year, a first judgement against the chemical and pharmaceutical giant followed, setting off a wave of lawsuits in the US.
Bayer had won nine US lawsuits before the three it has now lost. On Monday, the company announced that it would appeal the two previous defeats.
In 2020, Bayer launched a programme worth billions of dollars to settle the majority of the lawsuits without an admission of liability.
Bayer has already settled a large number of the complaints against it. When the company presented its financial figures for 2022 earlier this year, it announced that of an overall 154,000 claims that had been filed, about 109,000 had been settled or did not meet the settlement criteria.
As of the end of 2022, Bayer has set aside US$6.4 billion for settlements of existing and future glyphosate lawsuits. – Bernama
