A jury of the State of Georgia (United States) has sentenced the German group Bayer to pay 2,065 million dollars (about 1.9 billion euros) to a plaintiff who claimed that his herbicide Roundup, which contains glyphosate, caused cancer. The verdict, reached on Friday night, includes 65 million dollars in compensatory damages and 2,000 million dollars in punitive damage, as the law firms of the plaintiffs, Arnold & Itkin and Kline & Specter have communicated, in a statement sent to the Bloomberg and Reuters agencies.
Bayer has announced that he plans to resort the verdict, one of the largest in a case related to the Roundup product. The German group, one of the world’s largest manufacturers in the world, has had to face failures that set compensation for about 10,000 million dollars related to that product, which incorporated its portfolio with although the company has won 17 of the 25 trials on Roundup, has suffered multimillion -dollar sentences in the rest. In addition, there are more than 60,000 pending cases for which the group has provided provisions for about 5.9 billion dollars.
Bayer argues that glyphosate products are the products for the control of weeds most used in the world and that they are only very effective and provide economic and environmental benefits, but also have a solid safety profile. “Due to its long history of use, rigorous evidence and supervision, glyphosate is also one of the most studied herbicides in the world,” he says.
The German group pointed out in a statement cited by Reuters who did not agree with the jury’s verdict, since it entered into conflict with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and the consensus of regulatory agencies and their scientific evaluations worldwide. “We believe that we have solid arguments in the appeal to cancel this verdict and eliminate or reduce compensation for excessive and unconstitutional damage,” he said. He affirmed that compensation for damages in cases that have reached definitive sentences have been reduced by 90% in general compared to the original compensation of the jurors.
Bayer closed 2024 with as a result of the value adjustment approved in the business of the Crop Science division, in which the product questioned is included, slightly below the red numbers.
Bayer’s price as a result of legal risks. It was the greatest acquisition in Bayer’s 150 years and the largest operation of a German company, surpassing Chrysler’s purchase in 1998 by Daimler.
