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 The case is only the second of more than 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to
go to trial in the United States as litigation setbacks and a prior
jury verdict against the company have sent Bayer shares plunging.
"A responsible company would test its product. A responsible company
would tell their customers if they knew it causes cancer," Aimee
Wagstaff, a lawyer for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman, said during closing
arguments on Tuesday. She called conduct by Bayer's Monsanto unit
reckless and offensive.
Bayer, which bought Roundup maker Monsanto in a $63 billion deal
last year, denies the allegations, saying decades of studies by
independent scientists have shown glyphosate and Roundup to be safe
for human use.
In Hardeman's case, the jury on March 19 found Roundup to have been
a "substantial factor" in causing his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. That
verdict followed a first phase of the trial that focused exclusively
on science.
The decision allowed the trial to proceed to a second phase in which
the same jury will decide if Bayer is liable.
In the second phase lawyers for Hardeman were able to present
previously excluded internal documents allegedly showing the
company's efforts to influence scientists and regulators about the
popular product's safety.
Jurors will now decide whether Roundup was defectively designed,
whether Monsanto acted negligently, and if it failed to warn
consumers of Roundup's cancer risks. If jurors find the company
liable, they can award compensatory and punitive damages.
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Brian Stekloff, a lawyer for Bayer, on Tuesday said the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which regulates herbicides,
never removed Roundup from the market or required a cancer warning.
He also said any contribution to scientific studies by Monsanto
employees had been properly disclosed, accusing plaintiffs of taking
cherry-picked emails out of context.
The EPA, the European Chemicals Agency and other regulators have
found that glyphosate is not likely carcinogenic to humans. The
World Health Organization's cancer arm, however, reached a different
conclusion in 2015, classifying glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic
to humans."
In the first U.S. Roundup trial last year, another California man
was awarded $289 million after a state court jury found the weed
killer caused his cancer. That award was later reduced to $78
million and is on appeal.
($1 = 0.8839 euros)
(Reporting by Alexandria Sage in San Francisco; Writing by Tina
Bellon in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
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