PHILADELPHIA – For the very first time in Philadelphia, a jury has unanimously found in favor of the manufacturers of weed killer product Roundup, in the latest case to go to trial over allegations that product causes cancer in its users.
Plaintiff Carl Kline had first filed suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas in February 2022, versus Monsanto Company and Nouryon Chemicals. Judge Ann Butchart presided over the case.
Counsel for Kline, a retiree from the United States Post Office, had argued that his regular use of Roundup, a chemical herbicide containing glyphosate, caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
A Bayer spokesperson offered a statement on the trial result.
“Bayer has now won three consecutive victories at trial, and 13 of the last 19 cases where judgments were entered at trial, validating the company’s strategy of taking cases to trial based on strong scientific and regulatory evidence. The plaintiffs could not prove that Roundup was the cause of the injuries alleged in these cases, consistent with this science. The unanimous Kline verdict is the first to follow significant rulings in the Philadelphia litigation clarifying which scientific and regulatory conclusions could be admitted, a much-disputed issue in prior trials,” the statement said.
“While we have great sympathy for anyone who suffers a loss or injury, science proves that Roundup is not carcinogenic. We continue to stand behind the safety of Roundup and will confidently defend the safety of our products and our good faith actions in any future litigation.”
Plaintiff counsel member Rosemary Pinto of Feldman & Pinto, also provided a statement on the jury’s finding.
“We’re very disappointed in the jury verdict, which we plan to appeal, based upon adverse rulings in advance of the trial that really kept core components of the evidence out of the case. These included the fact that the EPA safety evaluation of Roundup has been vacated, who IARC (the International Agency for Research on Cancer) is and the relevance of their finding that Roundup is a probable human carcinogen, and also the allowance into evidence of findings by foreign regulatory agencies disguised as foreign scientists. All of those things collectively, we believe, tilted the trial in Monsanto’s favor, and it was inconsistent with the rulings in previous Roundup trials here in Philadelphia and across the country,” Pinto said.
As to why that particular evidence was excluded from this trial, Pinto clarified that Judge Butchart, the presiding judge in this case, did not make that determination, but rather, another Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas judge tasked with overseeing the Court’s mass tort program did (Judge Joshua H. Roberts).
“That evidence is crucial evidence that juries should be hearing,” Pinto said.
Monsanto has experienced mixed success in trial over the use of its Roundup product. It initially won nine straight trials, lost six of the following seven across a variety of jurisdictions nationwide, and has now notched three additional wins.
Monsanto’s streak was first snapped on Oct. 20 by a $1.25 million jury verdict for plaintiff John Durnell in a St. Louis, Missouri courtroom, while another similar case in San Diego was decided in favor of plaintiff Mike Dennis soon afterwards, for $332 million.
(The damages in the Dennis case were reduced to $28 million, through the granting of a post-trial motion from the company on Feb. 26.)
In the first local trial against the manufacturers of weed killer product Roundup, a Philadelphia jury found on Oct. 27 both that the product caused the cancer of the 83-year-old plaintiff Ernest Caranci, and that the failure to warn of the product’s carcinogenic properties justified a $175 million verdict.
Another trial in Jefferson City, Missouri saw $1.56 billion awarded to plaintiffs James Draeger, Valorie Gunther and Dan Anderson on Nov. 17.
In the second Roundup case based in Philadelphia, plaintiff Kelly Jo Martel was awarded $3.5 million in early December.
Bayer and Monsanto snapped their losing streak with a defense verdict victory rendered on Dec. 22 against plaintiff Bruce Jones, in California’s San Benito County Superior Court.
At the end of January, a Philadelphia jury handed down a record-setting $2.2 billion verdict in the third local trial surrounding Roundup – the largest ever for a case involving that product.
Yesterday, plaintiffs Michael Meyer and Bobbie Meyer voluntarily dismissed with prejudice their Roundup case in California’s Sonoma County Superior Court.
That development followed a jury verdict for Roundup manufacturers in Arkansas’s Conway County Circuit Court last Friday, absolving the companies of liability for cancer suffered by plaintiff-decedent Wanda Cody – in addition to the declaration of a mistrial just hours earlier in Delaware Superior Court, with respect to the case brought by the family of deceased South Carolina plaintiff Anthony Cloud.
These results now leave the companies 13-6 over their last 19 courtroom appearances, where cases went to the jury.
Roundup’s manufacturers are appealing verdicts for plaintiffs on the grounds that their heavy punitive damage awards exceed guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to both Monsanto and Bayer, Roundup and its main component glyphosate are safe for use and are not linked to cancer.
While Bayer settled the vast majority of Roundup-based lawsuit against it in 2020 for $10.9 billion, over 50,000 such cases against the company remain to be decided.
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas case 220201641
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com