California judge expedites Monsanto cancer trial for ailing couple
By vast
Published: December 6, 2018
Category: Glyphosate Controversy, The Organic & Non-GMO Report Newsletter
In one of over 9,300 lawsuits against Monsanto, claiming its weed killer Roundup causes cancer, two California residents in their 70s are suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Superior Court Judge Ioana Petrou has expedited their trial, expected to begin on March 18, 2019, in light of their illnesses and shortened life expectancies.
Bayer purchased Monsanto last year, and its shares have dropped almost 30 percent since a San Francisco judge awarded $289 million to a terminally ill groundskeeper (damages were reduced to $78 million).
“While we have great sympathy for the plaintiffs, we are confident that our glyphosate-based herbicides were not the cause of their injuries and we will vigorously defend them at trial,” read a company statement.
Alva and Alberta Pilliod regularly applied Roundup between 1975 and 2011; they were diagnosed with the cancer in 2011 and 2015, respectively. Another trial will begin in San Francisco Federal Court in late February; a Missouri state court will hear cases also.
The World Health Organization’s cancer agency classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015—but in 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that a decades-long review found glyphosate not likely carcinogenic to humans.
Source: Reuters
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