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Glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup: Billions in reserve for the settlement of disputes
Photo: ANDREW KELLY / REUTERS
Bayer has suffered its third consecutive defeat in a U.S. lawsuit over glyphosate-containing weed killers. Jurors in a California state court in San Diego awarded a 57-year-old man a total of $332 million in damages on Tuesday. Bayer said it was convinced it had strong arguments to prevail in an appeal.
Prior to losing three lawsuits, Bayer had won nine U.S. lawsuits. It was only on Monday that the company announced its intention to contest the two previous defeats.
Bayer also emphasizes that it remains convinced of the safety of glyphosate. In the San Diego case, $325 million was awarded in damages and another $<> million in punitive damages. Bayer called the ruling unfounded and the amount unconstitutional. In addition, there were legal errors in the proceedings. Jurors in the U.S. often award plaintiffs large sums of money, which judges often lower later.
In 2018, Bayer brought the problems surrounding the glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup in-house with the Monsanto takeover worth more than 60 billion dollars. In the same year, a first verdict against the Dax group followed, which triggered a wave of lawsuits in the USA. Then, in 2020, Bayer launched a multibillion-dollar program to settle the lawsuits out of court – and without admitting liability. At the end of 2022, $6.4 billion was still available for this purpose.
Bayer has already completed a large part of this. In the spring, in the course of the presentation of the business figures for 2022, it was said that of a total of around 154,000 claims filed in the meantime, around 109,000 had been compared or did not meet the comparison criteria.
mik/dpa-AFX