Johnson had lesions on most of his body, a doctor said.
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Monsanto wants total control, covers up grave GMO dangers' - Researcher
The World Against Monsanto: Holding the Corrupt Accountable
Jurors give $289 million to a man they say got cancer from Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller
Updated 0128 GMT (0928 HKT) August 12, 2018
Judge reads final verdict in Monsanto case 01:32
(CNN)San
Francisco jurors just ruled that Roundup, the most popular weedkiller
in the world, gave a former school groundskeeper terminal cancer.
So they awarded him $289 million in damages -- mostly to punish the agricultural company Monsanto.
Dewayne
Johnson's victory Friday could set a massive precedent for thousands of
other cases claiming Monsanto's famous herbicide causes non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma.
Johnson's case was the first to go to trial because doctors said he was near death. And in California, dying plaintiffs can be granted expedited trials.
Dewayne Johnson reacts after hearing the verdict in a California superior court.
CNN reported last year that more than 800 patients were suing Monsanto, claiming Roundup gave them cancer.
Since
then, hundreds more plaintiffs -- including cancer patients, their
spouses or their estates -- have also sued Monsanto, making similar
claims.
After three days of
deliberations this week, the jury at the Superior Court of California in
San Francisco awarded Johnson $250 million in punitive damages and
about $39 million in compensatory damages.
It
won't change the fact that Johnson's two sons might lose their dad
soon. But it will help them live more comfortably, Johnson's attorney
Timothy Litzenburg said.
Doctors weren't sure Johnson would live long enough to see his trial.
"He's going to live the rest of that time in extreme comfort," Litzenburg said.
After the verdict, Monsanto issued a statement saying it stands by the studies that suggest Roundup does not cause 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," Monsanto Vice
President Scott Partridge said.
But
Litzenburg said an appeal would be costly for Monsanto, since the
company would have to pay interest on the damages while the case is
being appealed. That's about $25 million a year, he said.
Lesions on much of his body
Johnson,
46, applied Roundup weedkiller 20 to 30 times per year while working as
a groundskeeper for a school district near San Francisco, his attorneys
said.
He testified that during
his work, he had two accidents in which he was soaked with the product.
The first accident happened in 2012.
Two years later, in 2014, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
On bad days, Johnson is too crippled to speak. Lesions cover as much as 80% of his body.
Johnson had lesions on most of his body, a doctor said.
Litzenburg
said the most heartbreaking part of Johnson's testimony was when the
father of two described telling his sons that he had terminal cancer.
Johnson's wife now works two 40-hour-per-week jobs to support the
family, Litzenburg said.
How carcinogenic (or not) are Roundup and glyphosate?
The
big questions at stake were whether Roundup can cause cancer and, if
so, whether Monsanto failed to warn consumers about the product's cancer
risk. The jury sided with Johnson on both.
In
March 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for
Research on Cancer (IARC) said the key ingredient in Roundup,
glyphosate, is "probably carcinogenic to humans."
"For
the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity
in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma," the report states.
But Monsanto has long maintained that Roundup does not cause cancer, and that the IARC report is greatly outnumbered by studies saying glyphosate is safe.
"More
than 800 scientific studies, the US EPA, the National Institutes of
Health and regulators around the world have concluded that glyphosate is
safe for use and does not cause cancer," said Partridge, Monsanto's
vice president of strategy.
He highlighted the Agricultural Health Study, which studied the effects of pesticides and glyphosate products on farmers and their spouses from 1993 to 2013.
"Many had already been using Roundup and other formulated products (since) it first came on the market," Partridge said.
A summary of that study
said "no association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid
tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL (non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma)."
"We all have sympathy
for Mr. Johnson," Partridge said this week. "It's natural he's looking
for answers. Glyphosate is not the answer."
Johnson watches in court as the first cancer patient to take Monsanto to trial over Roundup.
But
Litzenburg said glyphosate isn't the big problem -- Roundup is. He said
the interaction between glyphosate and other ingredients in Roundup
cause a "synergistic effect" that makes the product more carcinogenic.
Monsanto spokeswoman Charla Lord disputed that notion, saying regulatory authorities help ensure Roundup as a whole is safe.
"The
safety of each labeled use of a pesticide formulation must be evaluated
and approved by regulatory authorities before it is authorized for
sale," she said.
But Litzenburg said Friday's verdict should be a huge wake-up call to the EPA.
"I
think it's going to make people sit up and make government agencies
take a closer look at banning (Roundup)," Litzenburg said.
What did Johnson have to prove?
While
it was medically impossible to prove Roundup caused Johnson's terminal
illness, it's also impossible for Monsanto to prove Roundup did not
cause his cancer.
Thousands of other plaintiffs are awaiting trial, claiming Roundup causes cancer.
"Cancer is a very difficult case to try," Litzenburg said. "You can't X-ray it or biopsy it and come back with what caused it."
In this case, Monsanto was not required to prove anything. The burden of proof was on Johnson, the plaintiff.
But
that doesn't mean Johnson's attorneys had to prove Roundup was the sole
cause of his cancer. All they had to prove was whether Roundup was a
"substantial contributing factor" to his illness.
"Under
California law, that means Mr. Johnson's cancer would not have occurred
but for his exposure to Roundup," Monsanto spokeswoman Lord said.
She noted that it's possible his cancer could have developed from something unrelated to Roundup.
The majority of lymphoma cases are idiopathic -- meaning the cause is unknown, according to the American Cancer Society.
Litzenburg
agreed that most non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cases have not been linked to
one primary reason in the past. But he said the tide is starting to turn
-- similar to how it took decades for people to learn that tobacco can
be a big contributing factor for lung cancer.
"You
can't take a lung cancer tumor and run a test that proves that tobacco
caused that cancer. ... You're seeing the same thing here," Litzenburg
said. "I think we're in the beginning of that era of this dawning on us
as a country -- as a public -- the connection between these two things."
Thousands of cases to follow
Johnson hugs one of his lawyers after the jury awarded him $289 million in damages.
Litzenburg said he and other attorneys have more than 4,000 similar cases awaiting trial in various state courts.
He estimates another 400 cases have been filed in federal multidistrict litigation, or MDL.
MDL
is similar to a class-action lawsuit because it consolidates pre-trial
proceedings for the sake of efficiency. But unlike a class-action
lawsuit, each case within an MDL gets its own trial -- with its own
outcome.
In other words, one MDL plaintiff might get a large settlement, while another plaintiff might get nothing.
No dates have been set for those MDL trials, Litzenburg said.
But
one advantage of filing in state court -- as Johnson did -- instead of
through MDL is that state courts sometimes produce outcomes faster. And
that can be priceless for terminally ill patients.
Litzenburg said Friday's verdict is historic, especially since Roundup is the most widely used herbicide in the world.
"This is a big victory for human health worldwide," he said.
