With the recent court ruling against Monsanto, shares of the company and it’s parent Bayer took a sharp dive. The active ingredient in herbicide Roundup has been proven to cause cancer and awarded a $289 million damages claim to a single person. This may in fact open the floodgates of litigation against the companies.
DAMAGING DAMAGES. What started as a $289 million fine just had an even bigger financial effect on pharmaceutical and life sciences company Bayer. It’s now down $14 billion. On Friday, a state court in San Francisco, California, ruled that Monsanto — an agritech company Bayer acquired in June — owed California school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson $289 million in damages . The reason: the company’s weedkillers Roundup and Ranger Pro gave him terminal cancer and weren’t adequately labeled to detail those risks. Monsanto announced plans to appeal the court’s decision, but that couldn’t stop Bayer’s shares from plunging 12 percent on Monday, the equivalent of roughly $14 billion in value. Why Doctors In The Know No Longer Prescribe Blood Pressure Meds BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH? For years, health- and environmentally-focused agencies have debated whether or not glyphosate, the key chemical in both Roundup and Ranger Pro, actually causes cancer. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency within the World Health Organization (WHO), determined it is “probably carcinogenic in humans.” However, in December 2017, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis of numerous studies led to the conclusion that glyphosate is not likely to be […]
