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Roundup sales drop as jury rules it causes cancer

Publish date: 14 August 2018
Issue Number: 569
Diary: Legalbrief Environmental
Category: General

Roundup does cause cancer, a jury has declared in a landmark trial into the health dangers of Monsanto's weedkiller. A Daily Mail report notes that after three days of deliberations, jurors last week sided with terminally ill groundsman Dewayne Johnson, who has just weeks to live, awarding him $250m in punitive damages, plus nearly $40m in compensatory damages, bringing the total to $289m. Specifically, in eight weeks of proceedings, the jury was left convinced that Monsanto's product caused Johnson's cancer. Monsanto will appeal the verdict and the compensation will only be released when this has been heard. Johnson's lawyers will ask the appellate court to speed up the appeal so the money can be released while their client is still alive. The liable verdict means the case could open the door to hundreds of additional lawsuits against the company recently acquired by German-based pharmaceutical and chemical group Bayer. The jury also found Monsanto 'acted with malice, oppression or fraud and should be punished for its conduct', Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos announced in court in San Francisco. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said: ‘This won't cure DeWayne Lee Johnson's cancer, but it will send a strong message to a renegade company.’ The case, filed against Monsanto in 2016, was fast-tracked for trial due to the severe state of Johnson's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Full Daily Mail report

Roundup weedkiller could be pulled from British shelves. A report in The Independent notes that Homebase, one of the UK’s largest DIY retailers, was the first retailer to announce it was reviewing the sale of Roundup and Ranger Pro in the wake of the landmark case, and others were expected to follow. ‘We have confirmed that we will be reviewing our range of weedkiller products,’ a spokesperson for Homebase said, while B&Q had already started a broader review of garden products. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson said on Twitter that the verdict has ‘huge implications for the food chain’. Roundup is one of the UK’s most popular weedkiller brands, while glyphosate herbicides are the most widely used herbicide in UK agriculture. Environmentalists say the weedkiller is linked to cancer, although the claim is strongly denied by manufacturers and the EU has approved the chemical for use. Farmers warn that banning the chemical could cut crop yields by more than 10%, costing the economy hundreds of millions of pounds. A government spokesperson said: ‘The government’s priority is the protection of people and the environment. Decisions on the use of pesticides should be based on a careful scientific assessment of the risks.’

Full report in The Independent

Meanwhile, in another US court, a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos has been reinstated. This overturns the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) order that allowed continued use of the pesticide. According to a Jurist report, environmental and farm-worker advocacy groups took charge in the petition for review by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit of the EPA order, citing studies showing links to the pesticide, which was developed as a nerve gas during World War II, and harm to the developing brains of children. The petitioners had filed objections in the EPA’s review process contemporaneously with the petition for review before the court. The EPA argued that the court did not have jurisdiction until the EPA responds to the objections that the petitioners filed through the EPA process, but the court rejected this argument. Having established that jurisdiction to review the order was proper, the court reviewed the merits. The EPA did not present any arguments defending its decision in the order. The court found that the EPA’s own risk assessment from 2016 showed that the pesticide did not meet the standard of a ‘reasonable certainty of no harm’ which is in conflict with the language of the order describing ‘significant uncertainty’ of health effects of the pesticide. Therefore, the court granted the petition as the EPA was acting against its own research. The court vacated the EPA order and remanded the case to the EPA ‘with directions to revoke all tolerances and cancel all registrations for chlorpyrifos within 60 days’.

Full Jurist report

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