Bayer’s Monsanto was ordered to pay more than $1.5 billion Friday over claims its patented weed-killer, Roundup, was linked to users’ cancer, Bloomberg reported.
James Draeger, Valerie Gunther and Dan Anderson were each awarded a total of $61.1 million in actual damages and $500 million each in punitive damages by jurors in state court in Jefferson City, Missouri.
The three people alleged that their non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas — a type of cancer that begins in your lymphatic system, part of the body’s immune system — were caused by years of using Roundup while gardening.
Late last month, a Missouri state court jury awarded $1.25 million to a man claiming he developed cancer from exposure to Roundup, Courtroom View Network reported. Bayer attributes its winning trial record in litigation over its herbicide to confidence that its “products can be used safely and are not carcinogenic,” the company told the outlet.
Imagine I sold millions of dangerous materials that caused cancer without telling anyone of the dangers I’d be going to jail. Bayer (who has a history of doing this exact thing) does it and whelp just a drop in the bucket for them. At $1.5 billion they will happily do it again.
Bayer purchased Monsanto, who developed the product. Bayer did not develop it.
And? Bayer sold medicine tainted with HIV in Asia knowing the medicine would give people HIV/AIDS. So even if they didn’t develop it, there’s no way they didn’t know round up gave people cancer. You don’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying a company and not know. Any rational person would have pulled the plug on the deal or warned consumers the moment they found out.