Officials of Monsanto and their attorneys decided to pay off a St. Louis plaintiff, a professional landscaper who sued them claiming their weed killer QuikPRO caused him to develop Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells.
Plaintiff Brian Glasser on behalf of client Nathan Evans said the amount of the settlement is confidential.
"Nathan and his family are pleased to have this resolved," Glasser said. "We are very grateful to the Court and the members of the jury for the time and attention they gave Nathan’s case."
The trial in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri ran for just three days after it was expected to last a month and was streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
The St. Louis lawsuit was different than earlier trials involving a similar Monsanto product, Roundup. The alleged cancer cause this time was QuikPRO, a weed killer like Roundup but stronger, industrial strength, used by landscapers and gardening companies.
Evans used QuikPRO on large St. Louis commercial properties including the grounds of the beer maker Anheuser-Busch, and the headquarters of Monsanto. Evans’ cancer is currently in remission. Doctors told him there is little likelihood of recurrence.
It was the second time in a week the company settled with a plaintiff suing them over their weed killer. In the 17th Judicial District Court of Florida (Fort Lauderdale) a similar lawsuit ended with an out-of-court settlement before it was supposed to begin on Oct. 1.
In the St. Louis case, Judge Michael Mullen on Friday announced the settlement, dismissed and thanked the jury for their service.
“The parties have come to an agreement,” Mullen said. “I want to thank you very much. You were willing to serve for the whole month of November.”
Mullen also praised the attorneys for both sides.
“We had really good lawyers,” he said. “This is the first time we had this kind of trial in St. Louis. I wanted you guys (jury) to look good in front of these lawyers, and you knocked it out of the park.”
During the three days of the trial, attorneys representing Evans sought to show that Monsanto officials recklessly opted to market the allegedly more dangerous QuikPRO product in 2001, containing 74% glyphosate, the chemical they claimed caused cancer. This to maintain market share and profits after a patent for the company’s less powerful hand-held Roundup spray expired in 2000 (allowing imitators to come in with similar products). The less powerful hand-spray for private use in yards first marketed in 1974 contains 2% glyphosate.
Denver attorney David Wool on behalf of Evans said in his opening remarks that Monsanto officials knew the product was dangerous and indicated so in their inter-office emails, but hid their knowledge of it from the public and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Plaintiff attorneys said the product contained other dangerous carcinogens including formaldehyde and nitrates, plus a substance called “diquat,” a herbicide. The formulation was designed to cause “burndown,” penetration of a weed and the destruction of its root system killing it.
Plaintiff attorneys claimed it could also penetrate human skin, get in the blood stream, cause cell and DNA damage and pollute the lymphatic system.
Defense attorneys focused on demonstrating that the product had been exhaustively tested (including on laboratory mice) and had been approved for use by numerous government agencies including the EPA. They said QuikPRO only accounted for 1% of the glyphosate products as part of the company’s $60 billion business.
Monsanto’s attorney Philip S. Beck with the Bartlit Beck law firm said Evans’ lymphoma like the great majority of cases was a result of natural cell copy errors in the human body, and thus a simple case of bad luck. Most of the time bad cells are killed by the body’s defense mechanism. When cell mistakes are not killed and replicate, spreading out of control, cancer results and invades organs of the body.
Beck said in addition to bad cells multiplying, such cancers are most often caused by family heredity and environmental factors.
QuikPRO has been banned from use in Europe.
Attorneys for both sides based their positions on selective studies. Plaintiff attorneys cited a 2015 finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a “probable” carcinogen. Defense attorneys countered citing the Agricultural Health Study, an ongoing examination of farming related factors. An addendum to the study called the Andreotti paper in 2018 said there was no proven link between glyphosate and lymphoma.
Wool called that finding “flawed.”
Beck said IARC was not a real regulatory agency like the EPA, but simply a gathering of officials who met briefly in Europe and only gave glyphosate a cursory look. He said that meeting overreached, condemning as potentially harmful everything from baloney sandwich meat to working late-night hours.
Beck also denied a contention by Wool that Monsanto officials had “ghostwritten” science-finding papers (showing no carcinogen), wrote the reports themselves and then had outside scientists sign papers they had not written.