New Life For Roundup Litigation: $289 million verdict

A former groundskeeper at a school in California has won a $289 million victory in a lawsuit against Monsanto, after claiming that repeated contact with the company’s herbicide product Roundup was responsible for his blood cancer. A National Public Radio reporter says what he finds most interesting about this case is that the jury dismissed the findings of several institutions – including the EPA – that are responsible for determining product safety, seeming to accept plaintiffs’ contention that regulators are too cozy with the companies. This verdict could trigger “a landslide” of Roundup litigation, according to an article in Bloomberg Environment. It notes that currently there are already about 5,000 Roundup cases filed nationwide, and that in the first day following the San Francisco verdict, one law firm involved in the case received more than 200 phone calls from possible future plaintiffs. Although one agency, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, did conclude that glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, was a probable carcinogen, other agencies and studies have been doubtful. Not surprisingly, a Wall Street Journal editorial came down hard on the California verdict and its proponents. (“ Too bad there’s not a weed killer for junk lawsuits.”) Nonetheless, an article in Insurance Journal concludes that an appeal would face long odds. Earlier this year in the magazine The Scientist, a relatively balanced treatment of science and causation questions raised by this controversy delved into subtleties not usually covered in media treatment of the issue, including the difference between the effects of the active ingredient glyphosate and the actual Roundup product and its delivery system.