Clearly, the world's financial international media sources are taking quite seriously the announcement that Bayer's Monsanto is asking the court to throw out the $289 million glyphosate verdict in motions asking for a reconsideration hearing. In motions filed in San Francisco's Superior Court of California, Bayer said that the jury's decision was insufficiently supported by the evidence presented at trial by school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson.
Monsanto asked Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who oversaw the trial, to set aside the verdict or, if not, to reduce the award or grant a new trial. A hearing on the motions is set for Oct. 10. The company denies the allegations and previously said it would appeal the verdict if necessary.
>>>>>>> (After all, such a strategy recently worked quite well for Monsanto/Bayer, in Brazil, when an appeals court overturned the highly justified ruling by a Federal Judge in Brazil that banned Roundup/Glyphosate for the entire nation. See also: Brazil court lifts ban on glyphosate weedkillerSeptember 3, 2018
An appellate court lifted a court-ordered suspension of licenses in Brazil for products containing glyphosate, an industrial weedkiller in common use in Latin America's agricultural powerhouse.
Federal appeals court judge Kassio Marques ruled that "nothing justified" the suspension by a lower court, saying it had been abruptly imposed "without previous analysis of the grave impact it would have on the country's economy and on production in general."
The suspension, which had been ordered August 3 by a federal judge in Brasilia, was supposed to go into effect on Monday until a "toxicological re-evaluation" of all products containing glyphosate could be completed by Brazil's sanitary authority.]
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Back to Dewayne Johnson's case re: Roundup: The California jury had found Monsanto failed to warn Johnson and other consumers of the cancer risks posed by its weed-killers. It awarded $39 million in compensatory and $250 million in punitive damages. The company in its motion for a new trial also said statements by lawyers for Johnson inflamed and inappropriately influenced the jurors. Some legal experts have said Monsanto faces long odds on appeal on those grounds.
Reuters, for example, has the best, most consistent, and most thorough reporting on this case and what it all means, by Tina Bellon.
Bayer AG unit Monsanto on Tuesday asked a California judge to throw out a $289 million jury verdict awarded to a man who alleged the company's glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, gave him cancer. Monsanto is facing some 8,000 similar lawsuits across the United States.
Johnson's case, filed in 2016, had been fast-tracked to go to trial due because of the advanced medical danger from his lymph system cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, that he alleged (and the jury agreed!( was caused by years of exposure to both Roundup and Ranger Pro, yet another Monsanto herbicide that contains glyphosate.
This has hit Bayer hardest where it hurts most, in their stock price: Bayer's shares (which bought Monsanto this year for $63 billion), dropped massively after the Aug. 10 jury decision and the stock was still trading at 20 percent below its pre-verdict value of $85.45 as recently as a few days ago.
"The jury's decision is wholly at odds with over 40 years of real-world use, an extensive body of scientific data and analysis ... which support the conclusion that glyphosate-based herbicides are safe for use and do not cause cancer in humans," Bayer said in a statement, and that Johnson failed to prove glyphosate caused his cancer and the scientific evidence he presented at trial "fell well below the causation standard required under California law."
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