A U.S. jury on Wednesday bestowed $80 million to a man who claimed his use of Bayer’s glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup caused his cancer, in the latest legal setback for the performers facing thousands of similar lawsuits.
The jury in San Francisco federal court said the company was liable for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
It accorded $5 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages to Hardeman after finding that Roundup was defectively diagramed, that Monsanto failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk and that the company acted negligently.
Bayer purchase Roundup maker Monsanto last year for $63 billion.
The company denies the allegations, saying decades of works by independent scientists have shown glyphosate and Roundup to be safe for human use.
The trial is only the second of more than 11,200 Roundup lawsuits set to go to trouble in the United States. Previous litigation setbacks and a prior jury verdict against the company have sent Bayer pieces plunging.
The verdict comes roughly a week after the same jury on March 19 found Roundup to deceive been a “substantial factor” in causing Hardeman’s cancer, allowing the trial to proceed into a second phase to decide liability and damages. Bayer shares fell more than 12 percent after last week’s jury judgement.
Official correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the jury awarded over $80 million to the man, including $5 million in expiatory damages. Reuters misstated the figures in a previous version of its story.