Intoxication of a French farmer: Monsanto definitively condemned

Farmer Paul François has been leading a legal standoff against Monsanto for thirteen years.

REUTERS / Emmanuel Foudrot

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2 min

The Court of Cassation rejected on Wednesday the appeal brought by Monsanto, a subsidiary of the German group Bayer.

This decision finalizes the conviction of the firm in the case against a farmer intoxicated after inhaling vapors of the herbicide Lasso.

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After

, Monsanto is definitively condemned.

And so it is Paul François, a cereal farmer from Charente who has won his case three times.

The last time was in April 2019 before the Lyon Court of Appeal.

Paul François has been

suing the Bayer firm since 2007. He was poisoned in 2004 after inhaling vapors of Lasso, a herbicide marketed by Monsanto which has been banned since 2007 in France.

The farmer had been hospitalized for a long time and had even come close to death.

Since then, he still suffers from serious neurological disorders.

He had already obtained at the time, before

, that his disorders be recognized as an occupational disease.

It was after this recognition that he fought to have the group's responsibility for its intoxication recognized.

In total, the farmer is asking for more than one million euros in compensation.

Justice has ruled three times in his favor, but Monsanto, then Bayer, which bought the firm, have systematically appealed to the Supreme Court.

But after the rejection of this last appeal, the case finally goes to its conclusion: in a separate procedure, justice must rule on the damages claimed by the farmer.

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