A jury in Georgia has ordered the manufacturer of a popular weedkiller to pay nearly $2.1 billion to a customer who said that the product caused him to develop cancer.
The verdict against agribusiness giant Monsanto, now owned by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, is one of the largest the company has faced in litigation linking exposure to its Roundup herbicide to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Georgia homeowner John Barnes had used the weedkiller from 1999 to 2019 before he received his cancer diagnosis in March 2020, according to a Saturday statement from Barnes’ attorney, Kyle Findley, and his trial team at the law firm Arnold & Itkin. Barnes and other litigants have argued that Monsanto should be legally responsible for failing to warn consumers that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.
EPA approved the Roundup label without a consumer warning, which Bayer has said should prevent state courts from advancing legal claims against the product. While the agency has found that there is no evidence of cancer risk from glyphosate, some states have reached a different conclusion about the chemical’s risks.
