Judge Cuts $55 Million From $80 Million Roundup Verdict -- Update
July 15 2019 - 6:33PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Randazzo
A federal judge Monday cut down by $55 million a verdict tying
Bayer AG's Roundup weedkiller to cancer, as the company continues
to battle thousands of similar claims in the U.S.
The ruling comes in the case of Northern California resident
Edwin Hardeman, who won a more than $80 million jury verdict in a
case linking his non-Hodgkin lymphoma to yearslong Roundup use on
his residential properties. His March trial was the second of three
that Bayer has lost over the safety of Roundup, a product it
acquired last year through its purchase of Monsanto Co.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the $75 million in
punitive damages awarded to Mr. Hardeman by the six-person jury was
excessive compared with the $5.3 million in other damages. The
judge said $20 million in punitive damages, or roughly four times
the compensatory damages, was more appropriate under U.S. Supreme
Court guidelines.
"Based on the evidence that came in at trial, Monsanto deserves
to be punished," Judge Chhabria wrote in his Monday ruling. The
judge concluded that while the science is still mixed on whether
glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, causes non-Hodgkin
lymphoma, the company didn't seem to care about investigating
whether its product may be carcinogenic.
"While Monsanto repeatedly intones that it stands by the safety
of its product, the evidence at trial painted the picture of a
company focused on attacking or undermining the people who raised
concerns," he wrote.
Bayer said Monday the reduction of the damages is a step in the
right direction but that it still plans to appeal because the
jury's decision conflicts with scientific evidence and the
conclusions of health regulators world-wide.
Jennifer Moore, an attorney for Mr. Hardeman, said she disagrees
with the reduction of the damages but called it "a major victory"
that the judge didn't throw out the verdict entirely as Monsanto
requested.
Bayer similarly succeeded in having a trial judge slash the
first Roundup jury verdict in the case of a San Francisco Bay Area
groundskeeper, to $78.5 million from $289.2 million. The company is
now appealing that slimmed-down amount. Bayer is asking a judge to
reduce a third jury verdict, also in Northern California, of more
than $2 billion awarded in May to a couple who used Roundup at
their home.
In Mr. Hardeman's trial, unlike in the other two, jurors first
weighed whether science showed a link between Roundup and his
non-Hodgkin lymphoma before turning to the question of Monsanto's
liability.
The trio of jury verdicts and 13,000 additional claims tying
Roundup to cancer have sent German-based Bayer into turmoil. Its
shares have lost over 30% in value over the past year as investors
worry the legal battle could take years to resolve and end up
costing Bayer billions.
Analysts are closely watching the first cases moving through the
appeals process in search of clues to estimate total liabilities.
Bayer hasn't booked any liabilities yet.
Bayer says Roundup and glyphosate are safe and argues that more
than 800 scientific studies and decisions by regulators around the
world back up that view. The chemical has been under intense
scrutiny since 2015, when the International Agency for Research on
Cancer, a World Health Organization unit, classified glyphosate as
"probably carcinogenic to humans."
During a July 2 hearing in San Francisco, Judge Chhabria said he
was constitutionally required to reduce the damages in Mr.
Hardeman's case. He said in court that "Monsanto didn't seem
concerned at all with getting at the truth of whether Roundup
caused cancer."
After the hearing, one of the jurors in the case wrote a letter
to Judge Chhabria urging him not to reduce the verdict. "Every
single decimal in those numbers is the result of conscious
collaboration and calculated, deliberate efforts by all six of us,"
the juror, whose name wasn't publicly released, wrote, adding that
the deliberations included "some of the toughest decisions we have
ever made."
Bayer said in a court filing the judge shouldn't consider the
juror's letter and that it, along with similar letters jurors wrote
to the judge overseeing the first trial, "generates further
anti-Monsanto bias in the Bay Area that will infect future Roundup
trials."
The next Roundup trials are scheduled for August and September
in St. Louis County.
--Ruth Bender contributed to this article.
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 15, 2019 18:18 ET (22:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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