[SIZE=7]Cancer Patient Won’t Receive $289 Million Awarded In Weed Killer Lawsuit, Judge Rules[/SIZE] Latifah Muhammad October 23, 2018 8:05 am
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A Northern California man will receive substantially less than the $289 million that he won in a lawsuit against Monsanto chemicals after the judge decided that the jury gave him too much money. In a ruling handed down Monday (Oct. 22), San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos left DeWayne Johnson with less than half of the amount that he was originally awarded over the summer.
According to CNN, Judge Bolanos “constitutionally reduced to the maximum allowed by due process” on grounds that there was “no clear and convincing evidence” to prove malicious intent on Monsanto’s part. Bolano’s lowered the punitive damages from more than $200 million to just over $39 million, bringing Johnson’s total amount to around $80 million (which includes $39 million for lost wages). The judge also denied the company’s request to have the case tossed.
Johnson, who worked as a school groundskeeper in San Francisco, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after repeatedly using Roundup weed killer at work. He is one of the thousands of other users who has lodged similar claims against the company, which has been accused of “bullying scientist” and manipulating data to hide the herbicide’s carcinogenic properties.
Monsanto, which is owned by German pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, denies that Roundup causes cancer. “When we are faced with these kind of questions we only have really one solution, and that is to rely on expert interpretation of the existing scientific data,”
Harvey Glick from the company’s Singapore office said in a statement of the Roundup product. “That has been done by many experts in many countries and they’ve all come to the same conclusion — that it’s safe.”
I hope he sets up a trust for the kids (if he has any) and drafts a will. After the attorney’s expenses, he may still be left with over $30m, which can go a long way if properly managed.
Lawyer probably retained on contingency, taking ~30-40% if they are greedy.
The real money will come in the class action suit loading, i’m sure the sharks are already circling.
Monsanto was also the biggest supplier of the chemicals that came to be known as Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the US Army during the Vietnam war to clear millions of acres of vegetation in a vain attempt at crippling the Vietcong. Some American soldiers who fought in the war now suffer from heart disease, skin rashes,lung disease and other unexplained medical conditions. Remember these guys were not directly exposed to the chemical, they merely handled it when offloading from ships (millions of barrels were used over the course of the war), storing it, loading it onto airplanes etc. They were in peak physical condition when going to Vietnam but only started suffering these conditions after coming back.
If people who had brief interactions with the chemical while wearing protective clothing got affected, you can imagine the fate of the Vietnamese who came into direct contact with the chemical.