A St. Louis County jury decided on Tuesday that a woman's blood cancer was not caused by her use of Monsanto's weed killer Roundup.
During the month-long trial, plaintiff attorneys for Sharlean Gordon maintained that the Roundup that she used at her Illinois residence was a toxin that had caused her cancer.
Defense attorneys argued it was a matter of bad luck. The woman had contracted large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) as a result of naturally occurring cell mutations that they said make up the overwhelming majority of such cases.
Plaintiff attorneys had asked the jury to decide that the company had committed product defect and negligence and asked for $18 million in compensation with another $18 million for potential future medical costs and health problems.
The trial was streamed live courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
Gordon claimed that Roundup caused her to develop the DLBCL a rare cancer of the blood. Diagnosed with the disease in 2006 she underwent treatments and the cancer went into remission but recurred requiring further treatments. Gordon was in remission after 2009 but she still has to visit doctors checking for a possible recurrence.
The lawsuit sought damages for medical bills, anxiety, physical pain and suffering caused by the disease including the continuing worry today that it could again recur.
During closing remarks, Gordon's attorney Fidelma Fitzpatrick told jurors the case was not one of a mere scientific disagreement.
“This is a dispute where none should exist,” she said. “Monsanto has to take the responsibility that its product Roundup doesn’t hurt people. Monsanto put profits over people. It kept selling a product it knew would cause cancer. It should have tested its product.”
Fitzpatrick cited a statement from Monsanto product safety officer Donna Farmer in an email in 2003 in which Farmer said company officials could not say Roundup doesn’t cause cancer, because the necessary testing had not been performed.
“They admitted they hadn’t done any long-term testing since 1991, animal testing on glyphosate,” Fitzpatrick said.
Glyphosate is a primary ingredient in Roundup, the substance that kills the weed along with surfactant, a soapy substance that causes the glyphosate to adhere to the plant.
Fitzpatrick called Monsanto “recklessly indifferent” to the safety of its customers.
“They should have at least put a warning on the bottle,” Fitzpatrick said, “urging the use of PPE’s (personal protection equipment) like a mask and gloves. It doesn’t cost to put a warning on the bottle. They knew that if they did they would lose profits.”
Fitzpatrick exhibited photos of Gordon with her family before her illness and said she was a fun-loving and active person.
“Nobody told her that Roundup was putting her at risk,” Fitzpatrick said. “They (Monsanto) made the decision not to test. They still haven’t done the studies.”
Dr. James Parry, a noted toxicologist, requested that Monsanto do a series of studies to prove the safety of Roundup. Fitzpatrick exhibited a document that said a company officials' response was, “We simply aren’t going to do the studies that Dr. Parry suggests.”
With another glyphosate researcher, Dr. William Jameson, Fitzpatrick said Monsanto officials had asked him to be an expert witness for the company. She said when it became clear Jameson would tell the reality of the hazards of the product, company officials never called him back.
“They didn’t want the truth to come out,” Fitzpatrick said. “They knew that the testing would show that Roundup causes NHL cancer.”
Fitzpatrick told the jury their task was to hold Monsanto accountable.
“Their company policy of deceit is not acceptable,” she said. “Roundup wasn’t only killing weeds. It was killing her (Gordon).”
Gordon used the Roundup spray on a large three-lot property in Illinois from 1992 to 2017.
During this and other Roundup trials, defense attorneys relied heavily on an Agricultural Health Study in 2018 funded by the National Cancer Institute that found no link with cancer and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding that no association existed between glyphosate and cancer. Plaintiff attorneys cited a 2015 finding by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.
“IARC is part of the United Nations World Health Organization,” Fitzpatrick said. “Six months before it met alarms were going off at Monsanto.”
She added that company officials feared the product’s glyphosate would be labeled a carcinogen. She displayed an email in which a Monsanto official conceded that the product had “potential vulnerabilities.”
A 2015 company document urged “orchestration of an outcry” to IARC’s finding that glyphosate was a probable carcinogen.
Fitzpatrick said the company engaged in a PR campaign to influence public perception and to attack the IARC finding.
“Industry associations and experts were used in this campaign,” she said.
Fitzpatrick said it is not the glyphosate alone that is toxic but the formulation as a whole that is. She said the concoction does DNA damage, mutates cells and makes cell mutations occur faster.
“No animal studies expert were brought in by the defense,” Fitzpatrick said. “They’re not going to do tests because they don’t want to know and they don’t want to tell you what’s going on with these products.”
Fitzpatrick added that Gordon’s age (39) at the time of her illness was unusual for DLBCL, in which older men make up a majority.
Monsanto's attorney Christine Miller said it was not the company’s burden to prove anything.
“I don’t believe the plaintiffs came close to proving cause,” she said. “Natural (cell) copy errors cause almost all NHL cases. Dr. Cristian Tomasetti (defense expert witness) said 95.6% of NHL cases. Roundup does not cause NHL and did not cause Gordon’s.”
Miller described the plaintiff’s position as “no cause no case.”
“The EPA has never classified it (Roundup) as a carcinogen,” she said. “The plaintiffs wanted to talk about old emails, plucking them out of millions and taken out of context. Old emails don’t cause cancer.”
Miller called the emails displayed an example of “cherry-picking.”
Miller said mouse studies had been done in which no tumors were found and that expert witnesses for the defense used Roundup in their own yards because they knew the product was safe.
She displayed a chart that showed that the number of cases of NHL had remained basically the same (shown as a flat line) from 1992 to 2020 when the use of Roundup increased.
“The reason this bothers the plaintiffs is that it shows that Roundup is not carcinogenic,” Miller said. “The (NHL) cases stayed flat.”
Miller said if Roundup caused cancer the number of cases should increase the same as the increased use of the product.
Miller said that a plaintiff witness who had participated in the IARC study, Dr. Charles Jameson, when asked if NHL could occur naturally, responded “absolutely.” She said a graphic shown by plaintiff attorneys portraying their case as three pillars, science, cell and human data had been made up by the attorneys.
“Humans (studies) are the best,” Miller said. “It just makes sense. Animals are better than cell studies and we have to use animal studies, but people are not rodents.”
Miller said Monsanto had done extensive testing of Roundup beyond that which regulators required them to do.
Miller said every ingredient in Roundup was approved by the EPA.
She described expert plaintiff witness Dr. Martyn Smith, a toxicology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, as a “professional witness” who makes a living appearing at trials and who ignored findings that Roundup is not toxic.
“I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years and I have less courtroom time than he (Smith) does,” Miller said. “No pesticide regulatory agency in the world considers glyphosate to be a cause of cancer.”
Miller said IARC was a hypothetical hazards agency and not a real-use product regulator. She said Gordon had smoked for 30 years and smoking could be linked to DLBCL.
“She (Gordon) struggled and I know asking you to find against an individual is doing the hard thing,” Miller told the jury. “But the law requires you to put sympathy aside. The evidence is overwhelming that there is no (cancer) cause and no case.”
Allowed a 15-minute rebuttal, Fitzpatrick said Miller’s portrayal was another example of the company’s evasion of responsibility.
“These were deliberate decisions by Monsanto to manage a PR problem,” Fitzpatrick said. “They continue to put the lives of people at risk.”