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ASuperior Court jury in California on August 10 granted Dewayne Johnson $289 million in damages from Monsanto for its Roundup weed killer having caused his cancer. This is the first of more than 5,000 lawsuits Monsanto faces for its glyphosate-based weed killers. Johnson's case, filed in 2016, was fast-tracked because of the speed at which his non-Hodgkin lymphoma was progressing, according to Reuters.
The San Francisco jury took three days to deliver its verdict. Jury members agreed the company should have labeled Roundup as hazardous. One of Johnson’s lawyers, Brent Wisner, says in a statement that Monsanto knew “glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer,” according to company records.
After the trial, Scott Partridge, Monsanto’s vice president for global strategy, said the documents had been “taken completely out of context,” according to The Guardian. He added that the trial doesn't alter “the four-plus decades of safe use ...
