Judge affirms “guilty” verdict against Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, reduces punitive damages to $39 million

Judge affirms “guilty” verdict against Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicide, reduces punitive damages to $39 million

Thursday, October 25, 2018 by: Tracey Watson

Tags: badhealth, Bayer, cancer causes, comeupance, dangerous chemicals, environment, glyphosate, herbicide, justice, lawsuits, Monsanto, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, toxins, Victory

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(Natural News) The tide is finally turning against the world’s most evil corporation, and natural health advocates worldwide are celebrating. Over 8,000 lawsuits have been filed against Bayer AG’s Monsanto division by plaintiffs claiming that long-term exposure to the company’s glyphosate-based weed killer, Roundup, caused their cancer. In the first of these cases, a jury found in August this year that Roundup and Ranger Pro – another Monsanto product – had caused school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and a superior court judge just upheld the judgement, despite Bayer’s attempts to have the ruling overturned.
Judge Suzanne Bolanos of the Superior Court of California upheld the judgement but slashed the amount of punitive damages awarded from $250 million to $39 million – the maximum amount Bolanos said is permitted by law.
Victory sends Bayer shares plummeting
The original August ruling sent Bayer’s shares into a nosedive, wiping ten percent off their value immediately. Then, when Judge Bolanos upheld the verdict, the company’s share value declined by a further eight percent.
With another 8,000 lawsuits pending against Monsanto, it stands to reason that Bayer is likely regretting its decision to purchase the company for $63 billion earlier this year.
Irrespective, Bayer is now committed to cleaning up Monsanto’s mess and has vowed to continue fighting.
Reuters reported:
Bayer said in a statement the decision to reduce the damages was a step in the right direction, but it would still file an appeal with the California Court of Appeal, because the verdict was not supported by the evidence presented at the trial.
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“According to an earlier hearing, the judge toyed with the idea of dropping the damages altogether,” brokerage alpha said in a note to clients. “Now, however, the judge made a U-turn and confirmed the jury’s previous verdict.”
Monsanto, which denies the allegations, had asked the judge to throw out the entire original $289 million verdict or order a new trial on the punitive damages portion.
Conflicting scientific “findings”
In 2015, the independent scientists of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded:
The herbicide glyphosate and the insecticides malathion and diazinon were classified as probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A). [Emphasis added]
Their finding confirmed what thousands of people have known for years: Glyphosate causes cancer. However, it directly contradicted the findings of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which announced in 2017, after decades of research, that glyphosate is not a likely carcinogen for humans. So, which one is telling the truth?
Natural News reported back in 2016:
Data has been released that Monsanto and the EPA knew that glyphosate causes cancer in mammals as early as 1981. In fact, studies conducted as early as the late 1970s documented cancer caused by glyphosate in lab animals, including, dogs, mice and rats. Monsanto, with the EPA’s cooperation and complacency, intentionally and knowingly hid this information from investors, consumers and the public. …
EPA memos and internal correspondence from the early 1980s uncover a very different story. The same studies that Monsanto misrepresented to state that Roundup was a safe product, in fact state that glyphosate causes irreversible damage to the kidneys as well as hyperplasia in rats.
When Judge Bolanos was considering overturning the original judgement against Bayer in the Dewayne Johnson case, at least five of the jurors who found against the company sent letters to her imploring her to uphold their decision. These letters seem to have weighed heavily with the judge, who stated that “the jury was entitled to its findings.” (Related: EPA bases glyphosate safety on Monsanto data before mysteriously yanking documents from website, saying review is incomplete.)
The fact is that Monsanto’s choke-hold over the agricultural industry and its collusion with government agencies like the EPA are no longer enough to change the tide of public opinion. People everywhere are waking up to the truth about this company’s brazen disregard for human life. We salute the jurors who stood up to this agri giant and said, “No more.”
Discover the truth about Monsanto / Bayer at EvilBayer.com.
Sources include:
Reuters.com
IARC.fr [PDF]
NaturalNews.com