A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday reduced a $2.25 billion judgment against Bayer to $400 million. The case involves a Pennsylvania man who claimed he developed cancer after exposure to the company's herbicide, Roundup.
A jury at the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas held that John McKivison developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after using Roundup for yard work at home for many years, awarding $2.5 billion in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against Bayer.
Judge Susan Schulman granted some of Bayer's post-trial motions, reducing the compensatory damages to $50 million and the punitive damages to $350 million.
Bayer said it will continue to appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, challenging the trial court's decision to allow the jury to hear what Bayer claims was misleading and "inflammatory" testimony.
A Bayer spokesperson said Tuesday: "While the court's decision reduced the unconstitutional excessive damages, we still disagree with the liability verdict due to significant and reversible errors during the trial."
Bayer also called for legislative reform in the U.S. to protect companies whose products comply with federal labeling requirements.
McKivison's attorneys, Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, said they were pleased that Judge Schulman upheld the jury's finding that Roundup causes cancer. However, they plan to appeal to seek reinstatement of the $2.25 billion jury verdict.
In a joint statement, Kline and Itkin said: "The reduction of the jury verdict significantly deviates from established Pennsylvania law, and we plan to address this issue on appeal."
Bayer said decades of research show that Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.
Despite being one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S., Bayer ceased its residential sales of Roundup last year.
Bayer has won 14 out of 20 recent Roundup trials, but experienced a series of losses in late 2023 and early 2024, leading to over $4 billion in verdicts.
Some of these verdicts, like McKivison's case, were later reduced, but they ended Bayer's streak of nine consecutive wins, shattering investor and company beliefs that the worst of the Roundup litigation was over.
In the U.S., approximately 165,000 personal injury claims allege that Roundup caused their illnesses. Bayer inherited these lawsuits after its $63 billion acquisition of U.S. agri-chemical company Monsanto in 2018. Most plaintiffs, like McKivison, claim the product caused non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
In 2020, Bayer agreed to pay up to $9.6 billion to settle most then-pending Roundup cases but failed to cover future claims. There are still over 50,000 pending claims.
