Bayer AG will learn by September whether or not its appeal of a $289 million Roundup jury award — later reduced to $78 million —will result in the massive judgment being overturned.

According to Insurance Journal, the plaintiff, Dewayne J., a groundskeeper, claimed that his cancer was caused by the popular weedkiller. The Roundup jury award was issued in 2018 and on June 2, a California appeals court heard arguments in Bayer’s appeal. Dewayne’s was the first Bayer case to go to trial over allegations that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer. The appeals court has 90 days to issue its decision.

Roundup was made by Monsanto, which was later purchased by Bayer, leaving the multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company on the hook for Dewayne’s lawsuit as well as thousands of others. The ongoing criticism over the safety of Roundup, one of Bayer’s most profitable products, has caused the company’s stock value to plummet by more than 30 percent.

In 2014, 42-year-old Dewayne was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to NPR.

“His groundskeeper duties included mixing and spraying hundreds of gallons of Roundup, the company’s glyphosate-containing weedkiller product,” NPR reported.

According to Insurance Journal, if the appeals court reverses the lower court’s decision in Bayer’s favor, it could help the company in its negotiations with other plaintiffs. More than 52,000 lawsuits have been filed by plaintiffs saying that Roundup is dangerous and that the company knew or should have known of the risks. Some plaintiffs claim that the company actively concealed Roundup’s dangers in the interests of its own profits.

Insurance Journal speculates that if Bayer’s appeal is successful, the company may be more able to put pressure on the lawyers for plaintiffs filing Roundup claims. 

In its appellate arguments, Bayer maintained that Roundup is safe, pointing to determinations made by health organizations around the world.

However, Dewayne’s lawyers argued that Bayer has long misrepresented Roundup’s safety, specifically its main ingredient, glyphosate. The company had lied to consumers, the scientific community, and health agencies about the safety of the product. 

Canadian non-profit EcoJustice has claimed that Health Canada relied on false information when determining that glyphosate was safe. Allegedly, Monsanto doctored scientific studies to make it seem as if glyphosate was safe while knowing that it posed a threat to human health.

This unreliable scientific information was then used to form the basis for Health Canada’s decisions about glyphosate’s safety, a decision EcoJustice says affects the Canadian public. EcoJustice notes that a U.S. Roundup lawsuit referenced internal documents indicating that scientific documentation had been altered. These internal documents have come to be known as the “Monsanto Papers.”

According to Business Insider, Monsanto cites a 2017 study that found no “statistically significant” connection between glyphosate and any kind of cancer. However, the same study found that those who spray glyphosate have a higher likelihood of developing acute myeloid leukemia than other people.

Join a Roundup Weed Killer Cancer Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

You may qualify for this Roundup cancer lawsuit investigation if you were diagnosed with one of these conditions after using Roundup:

• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
• B-cell lymphoma
• T-cell lymphoma
• Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)
• Hairy cell lymphoma

See if you qualify by filling out the form on this page for a case evaluation with an experienced Roundup lawsuit attorney. 

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This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.