The second of thousands of Roundup lawsuits excluded from Multi District Litigation began trial this week in St. Louis County's 21st Judicial Court.
Mark McCostlin alleges in his complaint that work-related exposure to the herbicide is responsible for his cancer diagnosis.
“The claims in this case present common questions of fact and law concerning, among other things what information Monsanto possessed concerning the harmful effects of Roundup and/or glyphosate, what information Monsanto disclosed to consumers about those harmful effects, and what information Monsanto was required by law to disclose about those effects,” wrote Attorney Sarah Shoemake Doles in the brief.
As reported in the St. Louis Record, Roundup, produced by Monsanto, is an herbicide used to kill weeds that have sprouted among crops. Its active ingredient is glyphosate which plaintiffs nationwide allege causes cancer. Monsanto, the defendant at trial, was acquired by the Germany-based company Bayer in 2018 in a deal worth $63 billion at which time Bayer inherited the Roundup litigation.
“We continue to stand behind the safety of Roundup and will confidently defend the safety of our products as well as our good faith actions in any future litigation,” a Bayer spokesperson previously told the St. Louis Record.
McCostlin, 64, was diagnosed in his late 50s with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL), according to Majed Nachawati of Nachawati Law Group who is of counsel to the 64-year-old Lenexa, Kansas resident.
“There's a solid chance that it could come back at any time and that's a concern for his family with respect to future physical impairment and limitations,” Nachawati told the St. Louis Record. “They made this decision because they found some of the cancer had spread to his testicles. One of his testicles was removed and now obviously intimacy with his wife is virtually non-existent compared to before this.”
McCostlin is currently in remission from his illness.
A year ago, Monsanto prevailed in Alesi v Monsanto but the plaintiff’s experts are different in McCostlin’s case, according to Nachawati.
“We didn't have Dr. Luoping Zhang who is a world renowned epidemiologist,” he said. “That's a big difference and we have a different toxicologist. I think this toxicologist is going to be more knowledgeable on the subject matter. That will be impactful in my view.”
Barbara Allegrezza et al. v. Monsanto Company, of which McCostlin is a plaintiff, contains thousands of complaints by various plaintiffs that were pending in St. Louis County Court when Monsanto settled a large number of other cases in the federal MDL court system under U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California.
"This is part of those cases that are unresolved that we're currently trying," Nachawati added. "Monsanto should have included the thousands of St. Louis cases in a global settlement, in my opinion, but they did not and it was a colossal error because now they have thousands of cases left to resolve."
Case number 19SL-CC03421