Dover, Delaware (AP) – A mistrial was declared on Friday in the latest lawsuit claiming that exposure to the popular weedkiller Roundup leads to cancer. The decision came after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict following three days of deliberations. Despite the judge’s order to continue their discussions, the jurors remained deadlocked.
The lawsuit was filed by the family of Anthony Cloud, a landscaper from South Carolina who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2018. Sadly, he passed away in October 2021, just six weeks after filing the lawsuit. In their legal action, the family sought $142 million in punitive damages. The trial began in early February in Wilmington.
Since acquiring Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, in 2018, German chemical company Bayer AG has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits. In a separate case in January, a Philadelphia jury ordered Bayer to pay an astonishing $2.3 billion to a man diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup for two decades.
The Philadelphia verdict marked the largest compensation awarded so far throughout years of litigation surrounding Roundup. Prior to that, a Missouri jury ordered Bayer to pay over $1.5 billion in damages to three plaintiffs. In a 2019 California trial, Bayer was initially ordered to pay $2 billion, though the judge later reduced the amount to $87 million.
Bayer had set aside over $10 billion in 2020 to settle approximately 125,000 Roundup lawsuits. However, there are still tens of thousands pending. Despite winning nine consecutive trials in 2021, the company has recently encountered legal setbacks, with juries awarding enormous sums to plaintiffs. Just last year, a California jury ordered Bayer to pay $332 million, though a judge decreased the award to $28 million, determining it was excessive.
Like other cases, the plaintiffs in the Delaware lawsuit alleged that Monsanto had designed Roundup defectively and failed to provide adequate warnings about its potential health risks.
In June, Bayer agreed to pay nearly $7 million to settle allegations by the New York attorney general regarding false and misleading statements made by Monsanto about Roundup’s safety.
In 2022, a federal appeals court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to re-evaluate its 2020 finding that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, did not pose a health risk to people exposed to it.
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