SAN FRANCISCO – Monsanto on Friday filed its opening brief for its appeal of the verdict in its case with plaintiff Edwin Hardeman to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Last March, a jury verdict awarded Hardeman $80.27 million after finding that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, was a substantial factor in causing the Bay Area resident’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The total damages awarded have since been slashed to $25.27 million. Now Bayer, which purchased Monsanto last year for $63 billion, is asking the Ninth Circuit to reverse that verdict altogether.
Bayer’s opening appeal brief stated that the verdict should be reversed because the failure-to-warn claims at the center of the case are preempted by federal law and the trial court committed a host of reversible evidentiary and instructional errors relating to causation, including errors related to admitting expert evidence, an International Agency for Research on Cancer-related error, and flawed jury instructions.
"This court should reverse, and make clear that a manufacturer cannot be forced by state law to add a warning to its products that federal law would deem illegal; that expert testimony dependent on fundamental methodological flaws cannot be sufficient to take such a speculative case to the jury; and that a manufacturer cannot be punished for doing something that was perfectly legal both at the time and now – marketing without a cancer warning a product that regulators and reliable scientific studies have deemed non-carcinogenic,” wrote Bayer in its opening appeal brief.
Bayer has never wavered in its defense of Roudnup, amid the thousands of similar lawsuits that are lined up against it.
“Bayer stands behind these products and will continue to vigorously defend them,” said the company in a statement.
Hardeman’s case was the second of three straight California victories for plaintiffs suing Monsanto over similar accusations. A handful of early 2020 cases in Oakland as well as Monsanto’s longtime headquarters of St. Louis, Mo. were recently postponed. A number of other cases are still expected to go to trial, however, despite recent rumors of a potential global settlement.
New reports have stated that the number of similar cancer lawsuits filed against Bayer/Monsanto have doubled over the past three months, reaching more than 42,700 nationwide.