By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -Bayer must pay $78 million to a Pennsylvania man who said he got cancer from using the company's Roundup weedkiller, a state court jury in Philadelphia found on Thursday.
The verdict follows previous consecutive victories for Bayer (OTC:BAYRY) in that court. The company had won 14 of the previous 20 trials over Roundup, though it has been hit with several massive verdicts in the litigation, including last November for $1.56 billion, later reduced to $611 million, and one in January for $2.25 billion, later reduced to $400 million.
Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, lawyers for plaintiff William Melissen and his wife, Margaret, said in a statement that Bayer had "acted with reckless indifference to people's safety."
The company "still has not gotten the message that it needs to change its ways," they said.
The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages.
"We disagree with the jury's verdict, as it conflicts with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and the consensus of regulatory bodies and their scientific assessments worldwide," Bayer said in a statement.
The company said it believed it had a strong argument for reducing the punitive damages on appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that punitive damages should generally be no more than nine times compensatory damages.
The Melissens sued Bayer in 2021. They alleged that William, like other Roundup plaintiffs, developed a form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma from exposure to glyphosate, which was the active ingredient in Roundup sold for home use until last year.
Melissen said he used the product at home and at work from 1992 until 2020, when he was diagnosed. He alleges that both glyphosate and another chemical in Roundup caused his cancer.
Bayer maintains that glyphosate does not cause cancer and that the lawsuits are meritless. It acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto (NYSE:MON) in 2018.
The German company settled most of the then-pending Roundup litigation in 2020 for $10.9 billion, but currently faces about 58,000 claims, according to its most recent financial report.
Bayer won a significant legal victory in August, when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that federal law shields Bayer from state law claims, which conflicts with previous rulings by other federal appeals courts.
Bayer has said it will seek to have the U.S. Supreme Court resolve that conflict, and that a victory there could effectively end the Roundup litigation.
Bayer had asked the Philadelphia state court to follow the 3rd Circuit and throw out the case. The 3rd Circuit's jurisdiction includes federal courts in Pennsylvania, but state courts are not legally bound to follow it. That bid was denied, allowing the Melissens' case to go to trial, but the company is appealing the denial.