2018-08-12 at 7:47 PM UTC
A San Francisco jury Friday ruled in favor of a former Benicia Unified School District groundskeeper who claimed the chemical glyphosate – contained in the popular herbicide “Roundup” – caused his cancer.
The jury ordered that Roundup manufacturer Monsanto pay Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, who is suffering from terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, nearly $290 million in damages. The breakdown was $819,882 for loss of past earnings; $1,403,327 in future earnings; $4 million in past non-economic losses and $33 million in future non-economic losses.
When it came to punitive damages, the jury awarded Johnson $250 million of the $373 million he had sought.
“This jury found Monsanto acted with malice and oppression because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a member of Johnson’s legal team. “This should send a strong message to the boardroom of Monsanto.”
Johnson told the court that during his four years as the groundskeeper at the school district, he sprayed 150 gallons of Roundup 20-30 times a year. On the stand, he described what he called his careful use of the product.
“I figured if it could kill weeds it could kill me,” said Johnson.
Following the verdict, Scott Partridge, a Monsanto vice president, issued the following statement: “We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family. Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews – and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world – support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer. We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use and continues to be a vital, effective, and safe tool for farmers and others.”
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/10/monsanto-roundup-former-groundskeepers-cancer-290million/What a crock of shit. A quarter *billion* dollars because a guy with cancer used the safest herbicide on the market to spray weeds. Glyphosate and 2,4 D for that matter, are simply not cancer inducing unless you're licking the nozzle and repeatedly depressing the fun bar.
Dicamba, on the other hand, is very effective but nasty, nasty shit and I'm a little surprised at how hard the soybean board is pushing to increase it's application. You have to spray when it's completely windless, and even then it still tends to drift and literally wipes out your neighbor's fields unless they all use Dicamba resistant seed.
I've sprayed a
lot of glyphosate on a
lot of corn over the years...
Maybe I'll sue Bayer.
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2018-08-12 at 8:39 PM UTC
Cootehill
African Astronaut
[my unsymmetrically blurry oregano]
And it's a quarter a *billion* dollars, and the issue is not glyphosate, it's the product Roundup - apparently a surfactant in it may be to blame.
The ingredients to Agent Orange were all pretty much sade chemicals, like 2,4D but it was contaminated with dioxin contaminants that caused major health problems in humans.
Evidence suggests that Monsanto knew that Roundup was causing cancer, and tried to cover it up. Bayer buying Monsanto was a huge mistake.
I got my back wet with Roundup once from a leaky sprayer, and a few months later I got Hodgkin's Lymphoma, though Roundup has only been proven to be associated with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
2018-08-12 at 8:58 PM UTC
cupocheer
Space Nigga
[unwillingly condescend the dp]
Commercially sold AGENT ORANGE
Pay the American veterans and/or their surviving relatives whom MONSANTO murdered with their cancer-causing weed killer.
2018-08-13 at 12:14 AM UTC
Cootehill
African Astronaut
[my unsymmetrically blurry oregano]
Originally posted by cupocheer
Commercially sold AGENT ORANGE
Pay the American veterans and/or their surviving relatives whom MONSANTO murdered with their cancer-causing weed killer.
Almost all people want that to happen, and almost all of those people hate people like you.
By suggesting that the people who want compensation to be paid are like you, the powers that be have been able to manipulate and tame popular outrage, and so avoided paying compensation for 40 or so years by now.
I dunno how Bayer made a business case to buy Monsanto, the world's most skeleton-y in the closet company. It's just so nuts. The executives at Bayer must have gotten huge payoffs. It's criminal. I wouldn't have accepted Monsanto if I had got it as a present.
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2018-08-13 at 12:23 AM UTC
i want to be the president of monstonto when i grow up and invent new vegdables
2018-08-13 at 12:36 AM UTC
Originally posted by cupocheer
Commercially sold AGENT ORANGE
Pay the American veterans and/or their surviving relatives whom MONSANTO murdered with their cancer-causing weed killer.
Spray the damn politicians who got us into that fucking useless war.
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2018-08-13 at 1:34 PM UTC
Monosanto? sounds like a vag cream.
2018-08-13 at 3:29 PM UTC
Yeah too bad he'll be dead before the appellate court gets to hear the case.
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2018-08-13 at 3:31 PM UTC
aldra
JIDF Controlled Opposition
also that doesn't make any sense
the 'breakdown' is less than 50 mil, leaving the other 200 or so unaccounted for
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