Bayer Jury’s $2.2 Billion Roundup Verdict is Biggest Yet

Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a Pennsylvania jury to pay more than $2.2 billion to a former Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the weedkiller in the largest verdict so far in five years of litigation over the herbicide.

Jurors in state court in Philadelphia Friday awarded John McKivison $250 million to compensate for his losses and $2 billion in punitive damages over his claims that years of using Roundup at work and at home caused his cancer. The 49-year-old was exposed to Roundup when he worked as a landscaper, according to evidence in the case.

Monsanto has won 10 of 16 Roundup trials recently, but the cases it has lost include a $1.5 billion verdict in Missouri handed down in November to three ex-users of the herbicide. The Bayer unit faces its next trial early next month in state court in Delaware.

The German conglomerate remains under intense pressure from the massive liability it inherited with its $63 billion acquisition of St. Louis-based Monsanto in 2018. Bloomberg News reported Jan. 18 that company leaders were leaning against breakup options including separating its consumer-health and crops-science divisions in spite of investor frustration over Monsanto.

“We disagree with the jury’s adverse verdict that conflicts with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and worldwide regulatory and scientific assessments, and believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this verdict overturned and the unconstitutionally excessive damage award eliminated or reduced,” Bayer said in an emailed statement.

In 2019, a California jury awarded a combined $2.055 billion in damages to a husband and wife who claimed they got cancer from using the weedkiller for 30 years. That award later was cut to $87 million and allowed to stand by the US Supreme Court.

Shares of Bayer fell almost 3% before the jury announced its verdict Friday after Bank of America analysts downgraded the company to underperform from neutral because of an overhang created by the Roundup litigation.

Bayer has set aside as much as $16 billion to resolve more than 100,000 cases over Roundup, which it acquired in the Monsanto deal. The company now faces a second wave of suits alleging glyphosate and other elements of the herbicide are carcinogens. It lost a bid in 2022 to have the US Supreme Court hear arguments that all Roundup suits should be barred from going forward on procedural grounds.

Lawyers for McKivison, a resident of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, said the former landscaper loaded 25-gallon tanks of Roundup on his tractor to deal with weeds and other vegetation on the job and also used it on his lawn and garden at home. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a cancer linked to Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate — in 2020, according to court testimony.

“The jury spoke very elegantly with their verdict about the lengthy list of misconduct Monsanto engaged in as they recklessly sold this product for more than 50 years and callously endangered the safety of users,” said Thomas Kline, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who represented the plaintiff along with Jason Itkin in the three-week trial.

Roundup users argue in the lawsuits that Monsanto knew some researchers tagged glyphosate as a carcinogen, but the company sought to bury those studies. Internal Monsanto documents made public during the litigation also showed company officials ghost-wrote scientific studies backing glyphosate’s safety.

Bayer Chief Executive Officer Bill Anderson has been reviewing the company’s strategy and structure since taking over the helm in June. The Texas native has said nothing is off the table as he seeks to win back the faith of investors and navigate the company out of a thicket of challenges.

The case is McKivison v. Nouryon Chemicals, 220100337, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Top photo: A bottle of Bayer AG Roundup brand weedkiller concentrate is arranged for a photograph in a garden shed in Princeton, Illinois, U.S., on Thursday, March 28, 2019. Bayer vowed to keep defending its weedkiller Roundup after losing a second trial over claims it causes cancer, indicating that the embattled company isn’t yet ready to consider spending billions of dollars to settle thousands of similar lawsuits. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg