I-Team: Jury Orders Monsanto To Pay $290M In Roundup Trial
(CBSDFW.COM) - A California jury on Friday ordered the maker of the popular weed killer Roundup to pay $289 million in damages to a school's groundskeeper who alleges Roundup caused his cancer.
Dewayne Johnson's case was the first lawsuit to go to trial that alleges the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, causes cancer.
Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, faces thousands of similar lawsuits across the United States.
The jury at San Francisco's Superior Court of California found that Monsanto failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed killer.
Last year, the CBS 11 I-Team sat down with Monsanto's vice president, Scott Partridge, at the company's headquarters in St. Louis.
Partridge told the I-Team he is confident that Roundup is safe.
"Glyphosate has been around for about 40 years. It has a record of safe use over those four decades and has been the most studied agricultural chemical in history," Partridge said in a September 2017 interview with CBS 11 News.
Several North Texans have also sued Monsanto claiming Roundup caused them to get sick.
Navarro County resident Angie Dyer's case against Monsanto is set to go to trial in St. Louis in October.
Three years ago, doctors diagnosed Angie Dyer with a rare form of cancer – double hit large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Dyer said she believes her cancer is the result of years of extensive Roundup use. For a 22-year period while living on hay farms in Navarro County, Dyer said she frequently used the weed killer.
"At the time I didn't think much of it because it said it was safe," Dyer told the I-Team.
After being in remission for more than a year, Dyer said her cancer has returned.
