#MonsantoTrial
On August 10, San Francisco jurors awarded Dewayne "Lee" Johnson $289.2 million in damages after ruling unanimously that Monsanto's glyphosate-based Roundup, the most widely-used weedkiller in the world, gave the 46-year-old former school groundkeeper non-Hodgkin lymphoma. They also found, after eight weeks of trial proceedings, that Monsanto acted with "malice, oppression or fraud" by failing to warn Johnson that exposure to Roundup could cause cancer.
Johnson is one of more than 8,000 people from across the country to file suit against Monsanto in state and federal courts based on allegations linking Roundup to cancer. That number is about double how many lawsuits were pending before the Johnson verdict. The next Roundup cancer trial against Monsanto is scheduled to begin in October, in St. Louis, Missouri.
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A San Francisco jury returned a verdict today in the case of a former groundskeeper with terminal cancer against Monsanto Company, ordering the agrochemical giant to pay $39.2 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages for failing to warn consumers that exposure
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As its expert in reproductive toxicology, Monsanto called Dr. Warren Foster to the stand on August 2 to attack the animal studies cited by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). IARC relied on those studies for its determination that glyphosate is a carcinogen.
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Jurors will begin deliberations today in the case of Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto Co. following a heated showdown of closing arguments from attorneys on both sides. The deliberations are expected to last one to two days.
The plaintiff, Dewayne Johnson, a 46-year-old former groundskeeper who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma four years ago, claims Monsanto hid
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Monsanto’s six week trial which began June 22 with jury selection in San Francisco Superior Court has been a parade of mostly dark days for the chemical titan.
Tuesday, July 31, was a relatively bright oasis for Monsanto and by far its best showing so far in the dramatic
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Fifty years ago, in their popular hit “Chicago,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young asked Americans to take notice of a federal courtroom in the Windy City, where a black political activist sat bound, gagged and shackled to a chair in a legal drama where America’s justice system, values and character seemed to all be on trial.
Today, the most outspoken member of that band, Neil Young, visited another American courtroom. This one in San Francisco, where the essential values and future of our country once again are on trial. Young and his fellow activist Daryl Hannah
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Following the close of our case, Monsanto’s lawyers, on July 30, made an obligatory motion to nonsuit the case—a Hail Mary motion asking the judge to dismiss our claims on grounds that Plaintiff’s counsel, during the past six weeks, had not produced sufficient evidence to bring the case before the jury.
Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos denied the motion on all issues except our request
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On Friday morning, July 27, day 13 of the Monsanto trial, we called our final live witness in Dewayne Johnson’s case against Monsanto—Dr. Charles Benbrook. Benbrook is an agricultural and toxicology scientist. A Harvard graduate and former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences, Benbrook has been studying the link between
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Wednesday, July 25—Day 11 of the Monsanto trial—seemed a dark day for the Plaintiff.
With the jury off duty, Judge Bolanos heard a parade of evidentiary motions and made a series of surprising and disappointing rulings in Monsanto’s favor for each one.
First, Plaintiff’s counsel lead by Brent Wisner, sought to exclude evidence that our side’s exposure expert, Dr. William Sawyer, occasionally used Roundup himself. Wisner and his colleague, Tim Litzenburg,
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On Tuesday, July 24, the Johnson vs. Monsanto trial resumed with video testimony from Monsanto’s toxicologist, Donna Farmer, who leads the chemical company’s deceptively named Product Safety Center, and who has been a lifelong nemesis of environmental, safe food and farming advocates.
It wasn’t easy getting Farmer’s videotaped testimony. Here’s the backstory. When our legal team sent a process server to Farmer’s home in St. Louis, to subpoena her testimony, Farmer was observed fleeing through a backyard fence. We had the block staked out and successfully served the summons. But to
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On Monday morning, July 23, the jury in Johnson vs. Monsanto heard testimony from Dr. Ope Ofodile, the Plaintiff Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s dermatologist. Dr. Ofodile described beginning her treatment of Lee in 2014, shortly after Lee was diagnosed with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Her affection for Lee and her passionate devotion to his treatment was evidenced throughout her surprisingly moving testimony; she even wrote to Lee’s employer, the Benicia District School Board, on Lee’s behalf and “
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