Jury Orders Monsanto To Pay $289 Million To Cancer Patient In Roundup Lawsuit
A San Francisco jury has awarded nearly $290 million in damages to a terminally ill man who alleged a widely used weed killer caused his cancer.
In a verdict announced Friday, the jurors ruled in favor of Dewayne Johnson, a former groundskeeper for a San Francisco Bay Area school district, saying that agrochemical giant Monsanto caused him harm by failing to adequately warn about the potential dangers of using its popular weed killer Roundup.
They also concluded that the exposure to the products was a significant factor in causing harm to Johnson.
Jurors awarded Johnson about $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. Monsanto plans to appeal the decision.
“I just want to thank the men and women and everybody on the jury … for the hard work that they’ve done and for the days that they’ve spent in that courtroom,” Johnson said during a press conference Friday evening. “I’m glad to be here to help, but the cause is way bigger than me, so hopefully this thing will start to get the attention that it needs.”
The lawsuit alleged that exposure to the herbicide in the company’s products caused Johnson’s cancer and that the company knew and did nothing to warn users of the product.
It’s one of thousands of cases that have been filed against the St. Louis-based chemical giant nationwide.
“Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to require labeling, we are proud that an independent jury followed the evidence and used its voice to send a message to Monsanto that its years of deception regarding Roundup is over and that they should put consumer safety first over profits,” Brent Wisner, one of Johnson’s attorneys, said in a statement.
Johnson, 46, worked as a groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District and was responsible for applying Monsanto’s glyphosate-based products Roundup and Ranger Pro on school properties between 2012 and 2015.
