Bayer AG’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a Missouri jury to pay more than $1.5 billion to three former users of its Roundup weedkiller who blamed their cancers on the controversial product.
Jurors in state court in Jefferson City, Missouri late Friday awarded James Draeger, Valerie Gunther and Dan Anderson a total of $61.1 million in actual damages and $500 million each in punitive damages over their claims that years of using Roundup on their lawns and gardens caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas.
Monsanto has been hit with a recent spate of jury verdicts finding its Roundup contains carcinogens after winning nine cases against it. The more than $1.5 billion verdict is one of the largest damage awards handed down against a US corporate defendant this year.
