School groundsman, 46, with weeks to live, is awarded $289M by jury that found weedkiller Roundup DID give him lymphoma - and says cash will support his wife, who works two jobs, and children when he dies

Roundup does cause cancer, a jury has declared in an unprecedented trial into the health dangers of Monsanto's weedkiller.

After three days of deliberations, jurors on Friday sided with terminally-ill groundsman Dewayne Johnson, 46, who has just weeks to live, awarding him $250 million in punitive damages, plus nearly $40m in compensatory damages, bringing the total to $289m.

Specifically, in eight weeks of proceedings, the jury was left convinced that Monsanto's product caused Johnson's cancer.

Addressing a press conference on Friday evening, Johnson thanked his legal team, his wife, Araceli, and their two sons.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6049007/Roundup-cancerous-jury-declares.html

Such irresponsible companies should be shut down and even worse these idiots want to appeal this decision.

They are utterly unethical

If it's the same "Roundup" for sale in B,ham, Iv been using it for years !!!

Nice. But he'll be long dead by the time he sees any money from this. The defendants plan to appeal.

While California has a fast-track for claimants who are elderly, or afflicted with life-threatening ailments, it still will take a couple of years to work it's way through a court of appeals process, and then the Supreme Court...perhaps even Federal Court after that. Johnson's lawyers say he will likely die within "less than a couple of years".

Seems logical that a man made chemical based product that kills anything at all on this earth would have an adverse effect on the rest of the biological entities residing here. A friend of ours died due to
being in contact with sheep dip, what might it be doing to the sheep and in the end to humans that consume the meat. and what about the effects on the general environment where its used?

nicko wrote:If it's the same "Roundup" for sale in B,ham,  Iv been using it for years !!!

Roundup is a long established and widely used systemic herbicide that is available, I would think, in most garden centres and certainly in agricultural merchants' stores.

My family used it extensively on the farm in the late 1970s soon after it had been introduced and I have a Roundup spray in my garden shed now; in fact I used it only a couple of weeks or so ago.

I haven't been using it most of the time, like that poor chap in the US, so I must take comfort from that.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see the result of the appeal when I assume (Quill, help me out here on a point of US law) the case will go before a panel of judges who might well approach the subject somewhat more dispassionately that the jury who determined the matter in the lower court.

Vintage, my Cat had Fleas, I put him through a Sheep Dip, ----------it didn't work out well !!

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

nicko wrote:If it's the same "Roundup" for sale in B,ham,  Iv been using it for years !!!

Roundup is a long established and widely used systemic herbicide that is available, I would think, in most garden centres and certainly in agricultural merchants' stores.

My family used it extensively on the farm in the late 1970s soon after it had been introduced and I have a Roundup spray in my garden shed now; in fact I used it only a couple of weeks or so ago.

I haven't been using it most of the time, like that poor chap in the US, so I must take comfort from that.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see the result of the appeal when I assume (Quill, help me out here on a point of US law) the case will go before a panel of judges who might well approach the subject somewhat more dispassionately that the jury who determined the matter in the lower court.

It depends on what motivated the jury.  The article only touches on that briefly.  Something very heinous--perhaps some memos or studies/reports, etc.--seems to have gotten to the jury.  If so, we can't say they won't affect a panel of judges as well.  Judges can get pretty pissed if they think they are being fooked with.

As for points of law, on appeal the error must potentially affect the outcome, and some indication must be present in the record that it did.  So, it's called error and causation.  Otherwise, the norm is to not disturb the jury's determination (any way the jury could have legitimately reached their conclusion).

It's based upon a long standing philosophy that judges are no better at reaching a finding of fact, so there's no legitimate justification for overturning a jury's finding. It would just be substituting one man's opinion for another's.

Shouldn’t be spraying crops with anything that is poisonous.

eddie wrote:
Shouldn’t be spraying crops with anything that is poisonous.  

Glyphosphate is a systemic weedicide...

It is not sprayed onto crops; (it would kill them, as well as the weeds being targeted..).

Farmers will spray this weed killer on crops such as Wheat, Corn and Beans etc a few days before Combining !

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

eddie wrote:
Shouldn’t be spraying crops with anything that is poisonous.  

Glyphosphate is a systemic weedicide...

It is not sprayed onto crops;  (it would kill them, as well as the weeds being targeted..).

It is/was, however, sprayed on headlands around crops to kill weeds to prevent encroachment and spread and is/was also used to kill weeds on drilled fields before crops emerge in the spring. It is/was also used on the boundaries of cereal fields in close proximity to public roads.

I say "is/was" because it is years ago since we used it ; fairly soon after it was introduced I believe.