An Abington Township man has been awarded $78 million in a product liability lawsuit that alleged an ingredient in Roundup weed killer caused him to develop blood cancer. The decision was made Thursday by a jury in Philadelphia, resolving one of numerous lawsuits against Roundup manufacturer Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer AG.
William Melissen, 51, filed the lawsuit in 2021 after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma a year earlier. Melissen said he had been using Roundup at home and at work since 1992. The weed killer contains the herbicide glyphosate, which is widely used in large-scale agriculture and hundreds of products sold around the world.
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The $78 million verdict was awarded by a jury in state court in Philadelphia, where Monsanto recently won two other lawsuits filed by people who made similar claims about Roundup causing cancer. Although the company has won 14 of the last 20 Roundup lawsuits filed in the United States, past verdicts have awarded individual plaintiffs several hundred million dollars in some cases, Reuters reported.
Juries in California became the first in the country in 2019 to reach verdicts awarding plaintiffs large sums after they alleged long-term use of Roundup led to their cancer diagnoses. The chemical is meant to kill an enzyme that's present in plants but not people. Its widespread use and presence in ecosystems means that most people are exposed to it in varying amounts.
Scientific experts and health agencies have reached different conclusions about whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency in 2017 found that the chemical is "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans." Two years earlier, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer deemed glyphosate a "probable human carcinogen."
Standards for scientific and legal proof can sometimes be misaligned in product liability cases, leading to court decisions based on probable causation of harm before a definitive scientific consensus is reached.
After years of litigation claiming Roundup causes cancer, Monsanto announced in 2021 it would no longer include the chemical in its products meant for residential use.
Monsanto and Bayer maintain that glyphosate has not been definitively linked to cancer, although there is ongoing research into whether long-term exposure in high amounts may be connected to higher rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Bayer settled the bulk of the Roundup litigation for $10.9 billion in 2020, but it still faces about 58,000 claims, according to the company's most recent financial report.
"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 after Thursday's verdict.
Melissen's attorneys at Philadelphia-based Kline & Specter said Monsanto and Bayer "acted with reckless indifference" to human safety.
Bayer previously has appealed other large verdicts and had the awards reduced. The company indicated it likely will appeal to have the punitive damages lowered in Melissen's case.
In August, Bayer scored an important court victory in Philadelphia when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law protects the company from state law claims. That ruling was at odds with past federal appeals court rulings, setting up a likely resolution in the U.S. Supreme Court in the future. In the Melissen case, Bayer had asked the state court to follow the August ruling. The trial went ahead after that request was denied.