By Ruth Bender and Sara Randazzo 

A jury Wednesday awarded $80.3 million in damages to a California resident the jurors found contracted cancer from exposure to Bayer AG's Roundup weedkillers.

The San Francisco jury's finding that Monsanto Co. -- now owned by German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer -- acted negligently in failing to adequately warn about Roundup's danger is the latest setback in Bayer's efforts to clear its products of allegations that they trigger non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other cancers.

Analysts had widely expected the jury to hold Bayer liable for Edwin Hardeman's cancer in this two-phase federal court trial after the six-person jury in the first phase already reached the conclusion that Roundup was largely to blame for his illness.

While the first phase focused on scientific evidence to determine whether a link exists between Roundup and Mr. Hardeman's non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the jury in the second phase was to determine Monsanto's liability.

"Bayer stands behind these products and will vigorously defend them," the company said after the verdict, adding that it plans to appeal and that Wednesday's verdict has no effect on future trials. Attorneys for the plaintiff said the jury "sent a message to Monsanto that it needs to change the way it does business."

Jurors heard competing narratives in the second phase on whether Monsanto did enough to test the safety of glyphosate and pass that information to customers.

"A responsible company would test its product. A responsible company would tell consumers if they knew that it caused cancer," Jennifer Moore, an attorney for Mr. Hardeman, said during closing arguments. "And Monsanto didn't do either of those things." Ms. Moore said Monsanto was driven by greed and urged the jurors to stop "the lying, the ghostwriting, the manipulation" with its verdict.

Monsanto attorney Brian Stekloff countered during closing arguments that the company has studied Roundup and its ingredients for decades. "They did the tests, they provided it to regulators, they stood behind what they did, and they acted reasonably based on all of the science," he said.

The plaintiff's side, he said, is asking the jurors to believe that Monsanto employees in St. Louis leave home each day and say, "You know what, we are going to engage in a conspiracy to give people cancer....That's what they are asking you to believe, and that's outrageous."

Of the total damages awarded by the jury, $75 million were punitive. That is less dramatic than the amount Bayer faced in the first Roundup case to go to trial. In a state-court trial also in San Francisco, a jury in August awarded $289.2 million to former groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who also blamed regular Roundup use for his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A judge later reduced the award to $78.5 million, which Bayer is appealing.

Bayer has pledged to defend itself resolutely as it now faces lawsuits from 11,200 farmers, gardeners and other Roundup users. The company says Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are safe and argues that over 800 scientific studies and decisions by regulators around the world confirm that view.

"We are optimistic that at the end, facts will convince courts," Chief Executive Werner Baumann told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags Zeitung in the days after the phase-one verdict.

The market, however, has taken a dimmer view. Bayer shares extended sharp losses at the start of the week after sliding 13% on the day of the phase-one verdict. The jury's conclusion that Roundup was a "substantial factor" in Mr. Hardeman's case made analysts increasingly skeptical that Bayer can swing juries in its favor in the next cases going to trial. Mr. Baumann said the market was overreacting to the uncertain outcome of the litigation.

The lawsuits have ramped up since the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization branch, in 2015 designated glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans.

The next trial is slated to start Thursday in California state court in Oakland. That case involves a married couple in their 70s, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, who both blame diagnoses of non-Hodgkin lymphoma on decadeslong Roundup use. A judge accelerated the case because of their age and health condition.

With five other cases expected to go to trial this year, the coming months will be crucial for determining how big a financial liability the lawsuits could become for Bayer.

Tom Claps, a legal analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, said Wednesday's verdict "doesn't bode well for the remaining cases" in both state and federal court, since Monsanto thought the two-phased trial would be a more favorable setting. Investors unfamiliar with the U.S. legal system, he said, need to get comfortable with the fact that the litigation could take years to play out and cost what he estimates at between $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion to resolve.

Other investors and analysts have said they would wait for at least two or three further verdicts before estimating how much this might cost Bayer.

Bayer, meanwhile, is committed to fighting the verdicts on appeal.

Mr. Baumann has warned that the legal battle could take a few years to resolve.

Write to Ruth Bender at Ruth.Bender@wsj.com and Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 27, 2019 20:36 ET (00:36 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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