Jury Finds Bayer's Roundup Weedkiller Caused Man's Cancer (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Shares in Germany's Bayer's fell more than 12 percent on Wednesday after a second U.S. jury ruled its Roundup weed killer caused cancer. Tuesday's unanimous jury decision in San Francisco federal court was not a finding of Bayer's liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. Liability and damages will be decided by the same jury in a second trial phase beginning on Wednesday. Bayer, which denies allegations that glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer, said it was disappointed with the jury's initial decision. Bayer acquired Monsanto, the longtime maker of Roundup, for $63 billion last year. The case was only the second of some 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to go to trial in the United States. Another California man was awarded $289 million in August after a state court jury found Roundup caused his cancer. That award was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal.

Bayer had claimed that jury was overly influenced by plaintiffs' lawyers allegations of corporate misconduct and did not focus on the science. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called such evidence "a distraction" from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He split the Hardeman case into two phases: one to decide causation, the other to determine Bayer's potential liability and damages. Under Chhabria's order, the second phase would only take place if the jury found Roundup to be a substantial factor in causing Hardeman's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The jury found that it was on Tuesday.

Comments

Science Disagrees...

[moehoward]

Too bad they didn't use science to reach the proper verdict. This is insane. We have "votes" on climate change, and a "jury of your peers" to decide on medical and biological science.

Re:Science Disagrees...

[AvitarX]

The bigger problem (as far as keeping people and corporations on best behavior) is that something can kill thousands, but still be almost impossible to prove.

If round up increased one's risk of cancer by 50%, it'd still be nearly impossible to prove with a preponderance of the evidence that any given case of cancer was caused by it (in fact, even if it was responsible for 30% of all cancer, it most likely wouldn't be responsible for any given case).

It's hard to prove a specific case of cancer was caused by anything since it can kind of happen anyway.

Re: Science Disagrees...

[ceoyoyo]

Well, Monsanto used to be the largest manufacturer of PCBs in the US, a fair amount of which apparently got dumped into some rivers. They paid out $700 million to some people in Alabama as a settlement. Something along the same lines in Wales. They were also involved in making agent orange for the US to use in Vietnam, and then denied a connection between exposure and US veterans' medical problems. They settled that one too. They've also admitted to illegal bribery and accounting fraud.

Re:Science says "moehard" is a dumb faggot

[Anonymous Coward]

Post the scientific study that proves it or GTFO.

https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

I should add

[rsilvergun]

there's a nice big paper trail where the big wigs were aware of risks and ignored them. That's probably the biggest issue. e.g. the paper trail doesn't being with "There are risks, we need to research them" and then end with "We researched them and they are safe". It begins with "There are risks, we need to bury them" and ends there.