Concern is mounting about health risks associated with the world’s most popular herbicide – Monsanto’s Roundup Weed Killer.
Marketed as a safe way to manage weeds, Roundup has been the world’s most popular herbicide for a generation. Its success has been a cash cow for Monsanto and made the company an attractive acquisition target by Bayer AG, which recently completed a takeover of the company. But a recent independent study highlights growing concerns that the Glyphosate-based herbicide may cause cancer and that Monsanto has known about the health risks for decades but failed to warn consumers.
Marketed to both consumers and industrial-scale agricultural operations, Roundup has dominated the industry since 2007, with an estimated 1.4 billion pounds of the herbicide sold globally. In 2015, independent researchers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a division of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Jurors who have seen the evidence are also taking action. In August 2018, a San Francisco jury agreed that Monsanto purposefully ignored warnings and evidence that Roundup causes cancer. Jurors in that case awarded $289 million (including $250 million intended to punish Monsanto for failing to warn consumers) to a California school district groundskeeper who used Roundup frequently and was later diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The judgment was later reduced to $78 million.
Monsanto has had to turn over millions of pages of documents in response to the litigation, and the documents are shedding light on the extent that the company was aware of the health risks associated with the herbicide. Internal Monsanto documents have also revealed that the company tried to influence public opinion and policy by employing ghostwriters to draft scientific papers suggesting that Roundup is safe.
Lawsuits are proceeding in state and federal courts, seeking to hold Monsanto and Bayer accountable. Federal lawsuits are consolidated in multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The lead case is 3:16-md-02741-VC. Separate state lawsuits are proceeding in venues across the country.
The Mazzola Law Firm’s product liability lawyers have deep experience mounting the kind of complex and resource-intensive litigation required to hold multinational companies responsible for their dangerous products. The firm is actively pursuing justice on behalf of individuals who have suffered illness after using Roundup. For more information, go to texasrounduplawsuit.com.