ST. LOUIS — In a ruling late Monday, a California appeals court upheld an $86 million verdict finding Bayer AG responsible for a couple’s cancer after they used the company’s Roundup weedkiller, Reuters reported.
Bayer, which acquired the glyphosate-based weedkiller with its $63 billion purchase of St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. in 2018, had asked the court to overturn the verdict in February 2020, saying the finding and damages awarded “cannot be reconciled with either the law or sound science.”
The original April 2018 verdict in favor of the California couple, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, was for $2 billion, but it was later reduced to $86 million by a judge. The Pilliods had said they sprayed Roundup on their property for more than three decades, and contended the weedkiller caused their non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
"We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling as the verdict is not supported by the evidence at trial or the law. Monsanto will consider its legal options in this case," Bayer said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Bayer, which has been working to resolve about 125,000 lawsuits related to Roundup, lost three trials in 2018 and 2019 involving plaintiffs who said the weedkiller caused their cancer. Monday’s ruling was the third appeal the Germany-based pharma and agtech business has lost against U.S. court verdicts awarding damages to those plaintiffs.
In May, Bayer lost its appeal of a $25 million ruling that Roundup caused non-Hodgkins lymphoma in California man Edwin Hardeman. The company reiterated it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court this month to review Hardeman’s case, according to Reuters.
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