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The verdict in Oakland includes more than $55 million in compensatory damages to the couple and $2 billion in punitive damages, a statement said.
The verdict “is as clear of a statement as you can get that they need to change what they’re doing,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Brent Wisner, told reporters Monday.
Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, insists that glyphosate — the key ingredient in Roundup — is safe.
The septuagenarian plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod of Livermore, used the weed killer on their property for more than three decades and were diagnosed with the same type of cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, four years apart, according to their attorneys.
“The contrast between today’s verdict and EPA’s conclusion that there are ‘no risks to public health from the current registered uses of glyphosate’ could not be more stark,” Bayer said.
However, not all groups have mirrored the EPA’s announcement. Cases like the Pilliods’ surged after a World Health Organization report in 2015 suggested that glyphosate might cause cancer.
There have also been concerns about whether Monsanto has had undue influence over regulators, with internal company documents playing a key role in Monday’s verdict, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
In the statement, Michael Miller, another of the Pilliods’ lawyers, said their case is different from two previous Monsanto trials “where the judges severely limited the amount of plaintiffs’ evidence.” He said the jury was shown a “mountain of evidence showing Monsanto’s manipulation of science, the media and regulatory agencies to forward their own agenda.”
Wisner said Monday that this evidence included emails and text messages between Monsanto and EPA officials.
“This is going to continue until Monsanto and now Bayer takes responsibility for its product,” Wisner said.
“This is not the end of this litigation,” he said. “This is the beginning.”
CNN’s Holly Yan, Sarah Moon and Cheri Mossburg contributed to this report.
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