In Latest Roundup Herbicide Defeat for Bayer, Jury Awards California Couple $2 Billion
May 13 2019 - 5:45PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Randazzo and Ruth Bender
A jury dealt Bayer AG a third court defeat, awarding $2.055
billion to a California couple who blamed the German company's
Roundup weedkiller for causing their cancer.
The verdict by the Northern California jury comes as Bayer faces
a revolt from shareholders over last year's acquisition of Monsanto
Co., which exposed Bayer to some 13,400 claims tying Roundup to
cancer.
Two previous trial losses have helped wipe more than 30% off
Bayer's share price. Last month, a majority of Bayer shareholders
refused to endorse management's actions in the past year,
indicating that investors lack confidence in how the company is
being run.
Bayer has appealed a $78.5 million verdict reached in August,
the first Roundup case to go to trial. It has said it would appeal
the second, a more than $80 million jury award decided in
March.
Some investors have pushed Bayer to settle the cases soon,
though companies facing product-liability claims often bring a
dozen or more cases to trial before seriously entering settlement
talks.
Reaching a settlement in the case is complicated by the fact
that the product continues to be sold to consumers and farmers and
doesn't carry a cancer-warning label, which means the potential
pool of plaintiffs could expand indefinitely. The company could
reach a deal with the current batch of plaintiffs and set aside
money to pay out future claims, or continue fighting case by case
to gather more data points. People familiar with Bayer say the
company isn't planning to settle before at least a first few cases
have gone through appeal.
The jury in the third case found Bayer liable for the
non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnoses of Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a
married couple in their 70s who used Roundup on their San Francisco
Bay Area property for 35 years. The two were diagnosed four years
apart, in 2011 and 2015; both are in remission.
The trial unfolded much like the earlier two, with sparring over
scientific studies, the credibility of expert witnesses and the
relative importance of a 2015 designation by a World Health
Organization branch that glyphosate, the primary ingredient in
Roundup, is likely carcinogenic to humans.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs walked jurors through scientific
studies of rodents, cells and human populations that they say show
glyphosate and Roundup are carcinogenic. Bayer lawyers countered
that hundreds of studies have shown it to be safe, and pointed to
regulators like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that have
approved the product. The EPA in late April reaffirmed its
long-held conclusion that glyphosate, the world's most widely used
herbicide, is safe when used as directed and doesn't cause
cancer.
The health histories of Mr. and Mrs. Pilliod also figured
prominently in Bayer's case. Lawyers for the company pointed to
prior cancer diagnoses, family histories of cancer and autoimmune
diseases that they said elevated the couple's risk for non-Hodgkin
lymphoma -- not their weedkiller use.
The case was the first to go to trial of hundreds of lawsuits
consolidated in California state court. A judge put the Pilliods'
case on an accelerated timeline because of their age.
Hundreds of other cases are part of multidistrict litigation in
federal court in San Francisco. The judge overseeing those cases
recently called off two scheduled trials and ordered the parties to
try resolving the claims in mediation.
Bayer and its shareholders are now setting their hopes on the
first appeal in the case of former school groundskeeper Dewayne
Johnson, expected to be argued before a California state appellate
court before the end of the year.
Costco Wholesale Corp. pulled Roundup from its shelves, but
sales overall don't seem to have suffered much from the litigation.
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co., which markets Roundup to home-and-garden
retailers in the U.S., said its Roundup sales increased 20% in the
first three months of the year from the same period last year.
--Jacob Bunge contributed to this article.
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com and Ruth Bender
at Ruth.Bender@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 13, 2019 17:30 ET (21:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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