A federal judge Monday cut down by $55 million a verdict tying Bayer AG’s Roundup weedkiller to cancer, as the company continues to battle thousands of similar claims throughout the U.S.
The ruling comes in the case of Northern California resident Edwin Hardeman, who won a more than $80 million jury verdict in a case linking his non-Hodgkin lymphoma to yearslong Roundup use on his residential properties. His March trial was the second of three that Bayer BAYN, +0.10% has lost over the safety of Roundup, a product it acquired last year through its purchase of Monsanto Co.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the $75 million in punitive damages awarded to Hardeman by the six-person jury was excessive compared with the $5.3 million in other damages. The judge said $20 million in punitive damages, or roughly four times the compensatory damages, was more appropriate under U.S. Supreme Court guidelines.
“Based on the evidence that came in at trial, Monsanto deserves to be punished,” Chhabria wrote in his Monday ruling. The judge concluded that while the science is still mixed on whether glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the company didn’t seem to care about investigating whether its product may be carcinogenic.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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