US judges slash damages in glyphosate cancer lawsuits
By 
Rebecca Trager2019-07-31T14:27:00
While upholding rulings linking the herbicide to cancer, judges have cut Bayer-Monsanto’s fines from billions to tens of millions of dollars
Judges in three recent US lawsuits linking Bayer-Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides to users’ cancer have significantly reduced the damages awarded by juries.
In May of this year, a California jury ordered Bayer to pay over $2 billion (£1.55 billion) in damages to a couple who both suffer from non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), but on 25 July a judge slashed that to less than $87 million, ruling that the punitive damage awards were excessive and unconstitutional. And while, in March, a separate California jury awarded $80 million to another NHL victim, the judge reduced the award to $25 million in mid-July. Last year, a third jury in the state ordered the company to pay $289 million to a groundskeeper with the same terminal form of cancer, but that amount was later reduced to $78 million.