New trouble for Bayer in the US legal dispute over the alleged cancer risks of weed killers containing glyphosate: After a jury in Philadelphia recently awarded 83-year-old Ernie Caranci, who blamed glyphosate for his cancer, $25 million in damages and $150 million in punitive damages, the company terminated Bayer announced that it wanted to challenge this and another judgment that was negative for the company. There were two court defeats within a week after the DAX group had previously won nine cases.
Bayer also emphasizes that it remains convinced of the safety of glyphosate. The amount of damages in the most recent case could still decrease. Lay juries in the USA often award large sums to plaintiffs, which judges often reduce.
Bayer took on the problems surrounding the weed killer Roundup, which contains glyphosate, in 2018 with its $60 billion takeover of Monsanto. In the same year, the first judgment against the DAX group followed, which set off a wave of lawsuits in the USA. In 2020, Bayer launched a billion-dollar program to settle the majority of the lawsuits – without admitting liability.
Bayer has already processed the majority of the lawsuits. In the spring, when the business figures for 2022 were presented, it was said that of the total of around 154,000 claims registered, around 109,000 had been compared or did not meet the comparison criteria. In addition, Bayer can – as of the end of 2022 – rely on a cushion of 6.4 billion US dollars, which the group has set aside for settlements of existing and future glyphosate lawsuits.