Second Bayer Ruling Links Weed Killer to Cancer

killer causes cancer. The trial now moves to a second phase to determine the company's liability and any damages for Edwin Hardeman, who sprayed the who said that he sprayed the herbicide on his property for decades and that it caused his non Hodgkins lymphoma. These are just the first two cases out of more than eleven thousand. Joining me is Eric Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and Business School. Eric first described the way

the proceedings were split at Buyer's request and to its advantage. Yeah, Jenn, and that's actually an important point in the outcome here. Buyer convinced the judge to try the case in two separate phases so that jurors first would decide whether round up was a substantial factor in the plaints of cancer before the jury got to hear about alleged wrongdoing by the company. The alleged wrongdoing being and failing to warn people about cancer risks and maybe hiding evidence. So this

was Bears. This was Bear's new card in their defense strategy. So will this second phase be a steeper climb for the defense as jurors will hear some damaging evidence which you referenced that mont Santo ghost wrote scientific literature to ensure that Roundup was not classified as christinogenic. Yeah, Now the jury is going to get to hear the emotionally flammable evidence that the evidence that, if believed, makes Buyer

look like really bad people. The exact evidence. This was that nature of the evidence that made buyer wanted not to be in the first phase, so they got kind of a clean decision about about whether it caused cancer. So it only gets worse for buyer. The company insists that the active ingredient in the herbicide does not cause cancer. Buyers share price has dropped since its acquisition of mon Santo in June. Will it continue to face these lawsuits

until it changes the ingredients in Roundup? Yeah, and maybe even after them because the lawsuits are about people who say they were hurt by the old ingredients, and you know what's going on here? Is there short of two levels of reality? There's some level of scientific reality. Buyer says there are many, many, many, many studies, including studies that had nothing to do with that say it doesn't cause cancer. The e p A didn't require a warning.

European people didn't require a warning. That's one level, but there's another level. And the other level is what jurors will believe. And what jurors will believe is what turns into judgments and financial liabilities and the risk to the stock price. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the settlement value of all the cases would be more than five billion dollars. Will this verdict edge the company to a settlement or is it too soon? Yeah? I think it's too soon.

You don't want to settle. You don't want to settle on something that looks like weakness and a loss. So I don't think they're ready to settle. I think they're ready to continue their battle. It's it's one jury. Uh, it's we don't know what another jury would be. It's not good news for Buyer, but it is just one jury. The last jury returned a verdict of two nine million dollars which was reduced by a judge to seventy eight point six million, So they were very unhappy with the

way Monsanto conducted itself over the years. Yeah, that was a socket to verdict technically, term um, you know that if you get the jury mad at the defendant, and the defendant is a big corporation, then you can really get these big verdicts that the judge is cut down and even the seventy eight million dollar one might be cut down further on appeal. Now, this judge and apparently he was almost bent over backwards for Buyer during the first part of the trial and made sure that a

lot of evidence didn't get in at this point. But now at the second part of the trial he's being a little more expansive and he said he wrote that there is strong evidence from which a jury could conclude that quote Monsanto does not particularly care whether it's product is in fact giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue. So if the judge feels that

there's strong evidence. What's the jury likely to feel? Oh boy, you never know. But that wasn't That was not good news. Um. Actually, Joel Rosenblatt, one of your Boomberg colleagues, wrote something that I read this morning on my on my terminal that covers us really well, did a really good piece. Um. The judge was very fair to Buyer. Um. Maybe in part because the judge wanted this verdict to be bulletproof

difficult to appeal. So one result is that one ground for appeal that Buyer has tried to use, which is that these these trials should be separated into two phases. That went away because the judge, Judge Trowberry, gave him the two phases. So that's the extra bit of bad news. This. This is gonna be a tougher one to appeal if Buyer in the end loses some another big judgment. So there are several more trials already scheduled in California and St. Louis.

Does Buyer learn from these from the prior trials? Do they change their strategy? Yeah? Whenever you try, whether you win or lose, you you you review everything, your review everything that you think worked with the jury. Everything you think didn't work with the jury, you've seen a little bit more about what the other side is going to say and what they're gonna do to tear your pace,

your case apart. So when you have a series of trials, when you have these like kind of mass mass towards kinds of things with series of trials, um, the really important thing to do in these early cases is to learn as much as you can, and they are learning a great deal, I assume because these cases also are are rather long. They're not They're not short cases by any means. This next phase is expected to be about two weeks long of the second phase of this trial.

Thanks so much, Eric, that's Eric Gordon. He's a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and Business School. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg m HM.