by Dietrich Knoth

NEW YORK: A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday reduced a $2.25 billion judgment against Bayer to $400 million after a Pennsylvania man said exposure to the company’s Roundup weedkiller caused his cancer.

on a jury Philadelphia Courts The bench of Common Pleas found that John McKivison non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma This was the result of using Roundup for yard work at his home for several years, and it ordered Bayer to pay $250 million. compensatory damages and 2 billion dollars punitive damages,

Judge Susan Shulman accepted some of Bayer’s post-trial motions challenging that verdict, and reduced the compensatory damages to $50 million and the punitive damages to $350 million.

Bayer said it would continue to appeal. superior Court A Pennsylvania district judge has challenged a trial court’s decision to allow the jury to hear misleading and “inflammatory” testimony.

“Although the Court’s decision strikes down the unconstitutionally excessive compensation award, we continue to disagree with the liability judgment because the hearing contained significant and reversible errors,” a Bayer spokesman said Tuesday.

Beyer also said US Legislative Reform Protecting companies whose products comply with federal labeling requirements.

McKivison’s attorneys, Tom Kline and Jason Itkin, said they were pleased that Shulman upheld the jury’s finding that Roundup causes cancer. But they also intend to appeal, seeking to reinstate the $2.25 billion jury verdict.

“The reduction in the magnitude of the jury verdict is a clear departure from established Pennsylvania law, which we plan to address in the appeal,” Kline and Itkin said in a joint statement.

Bayer has said decades of studies have shown that Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use. Roundup remains one of the most widely used weedkillers in the United States, though the company stopped selling it for household use last year.

Bayer has won 14 of the last 20 Roundup trials, but it

Continuing losses are expected in late 2023 and early 2024, resulting in losses of over $4 billion.

Some of these verdicts, such as the McKivison decision, were later reduced, but these cases ended a nine-case winning streak for Bayer and others. The broke investor And the company expects the worst Roundup lawsuit Was over.

About 165,000 claims have been filed in the U.S. against the company for personal injuries allegedly caused by Roundup, which Bayer acquired as part of its $63 billion acquisition of Roundup. American Agricultural Chemical Company Monsanto filed the allegations in 2018. Like McKivison, most of the plaintiffs allege the product caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In 2020, Bayer settled most of its pending Roundup cases for up to $9.6 billion, but no agreement covering future cases has been reached. More than 50,000 claims are still pending. (Reporting by Dietrich Noth; Editing by Josie Cao, Richard Chang and Gerry Doyle)