A California jury on Friday found agriculture business giant Monsanto liable for causing a groundskeeper’s cancer in the world’s first ruling on the health effects of the popular weed killer Roundup.
The Superior Court jury emerged from three days of deliberations to find the global company failed to warn a school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killers containing the chemical herbicide glyphosate.
The jury awarded Johnson $39 million in compensation and fined the company $250 million in punitive damages. Monsanto was recently purchased by the German conglomerate Bayer for just over $62.5 billion. The Johnson lawsuit was the first to go to trial, but thousands more are pending in the U.S.
Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer is one of the most popular and regularly used herbicides in the U.S. and around the world.
The company was defiant after the verdict, saying there is not evidence that glyphosate causes cancer, and was adamant that it did not cause Johnson’s disease.
“Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews … support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer,” Monsanto said in a statement.
Environmentalists applauded the victory. Monsanto made Roundup the “oxycontin” of weed killers “and now the addiction and damage they caused have come home to roost,” said Ken Cook, the president of Environmental Working Group.
“This won’t cure DeWayne Lee Johnson’s cancer, but it will send a strong message to a renegade company,” Cook added.
