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Agrochemical
company Monsanto has been ordered to pay $289 million in damages after allegedly
causing one man’s cancer and opting not to warn consumers of the dangers of its
products.
Dewayne
Johnson
In the
first resolved case of it’s kind, Mansanto defended against claimant and school groundskeeper
Dewayne Johnson – who was diagnosed with terminal non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014.
The jury
found the company’s weedkillers – which Johnson had used professionally for a
number of years – contributed ‘substantially’ to the development of his
illness.
‘Easy to
win’
After the
verdict was announced Friday, Johnson’s lawyer Brent Wisner said: “When
you are right, it is really easy to win.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World
Health Organization (WHO) are divided on the status of glyphosate, the chemical found in
Mansanto’s products Roundup and RangerPro.
While the WHO has deemed the chemical ‘probably
carcinogenic’, the EPA maintains that the product can be used safely.
Conversely, the state of California lists glysophate as a known
carcinogen – and Wisner said the evidence against Mansanto was ‘overwhelming’.
‘Malice’
Not only did jurors find Mansanto’s products to be
definitively linked to Johnson’s suffering but it indicated that the company
had acted with ‘malice’ by deliberately concealing the carcinogenic properties
of its products.
Despite the fact that Johnson is one of 5,000 US residents
with cases against the brand, Mansanto Vice President Scott Partridge maintains
that ‘the jury got it wrong’.
