Judge Slashes $2.25B Verdict to $400M in Bayer Roundup Case

(DailyDig.com) – On June 4, a judge in Pennsylvania reduced a verdict of $2.25 billion against Bayer to just $400 million. This was the judgment from a trial that found Bayer guilty regarding their product, Roundup, a weedkiller that the claimant said, due to the years-long exposure to it, gave him cancer.

The claimant, John McKivison, developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma, for which the Philadelphia Court’s jury found his exposure to Roundup responsible. They awarded the claimant two hundred fifty dollars for compensatory damages and two billion dollars for punitive damages.

The judge, Susan Schulman, lowered the verdict to $400 million, taking into consideration some of the motions Bayer raised during post-trial challenges. The judge reduced the compensatory damages from $250 million down to $50 million and the punitive damages from $2 billion down to $350 million.

Appeals to Pennsylvania’s Superior Court by Bayer will continue, challenging the court’s decision to allow the jury to hear what they deemed provocative and disingenuous testimony during the trial. A spokesperson from Bayer stated, after the reduced verdict, that they approve of the reduction of the excessive and unconstitutional damage award, but they still believe that the liability verdict ruling was the result of compelling errors that constitute a reversible verdict.

Jason Itkin and Tom Kline, the attorneys for McKivison, said in a joint statement that they were satisfied that the judge upheld the jury’s finding that Bayer’s product, Roundup, caused their client’s cancer. They stated that they intend to appeal the reduction in the jury’s verdict in order to restore the original verdict of $2.25 billion. They claimed that the reduction of the jury’s verdict was clearly an abandonment of Pennsylvania’s well-established law.

Bayer has maintained that studies over the last several decades have demonstrated that the active ingredient of Roundup, glyphosate, is safe for humans to use. In the US weedkiller market, Roundup is one of the most widely used products. Even with that claim, Bayer has slowly eliminated the product from their home-use sales since last year.