Reduced damages: A court in Philadelphia has reduced the original award of $2.25 billion to $400 million. Nevertheless, Bayer remains dissatisfied.
The pharmaceutical and agrochemical company Bayer has to pay significantly less in a legal dispute over the glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup.
A court in Philadelphia reduced the damages awarded to the plaintiff by a jury from $2.25 billion to $400 million (€367.5 million), according to court documents. This was the highest amount of damages since the trials over the weed killer Roundup began in 2018. Bayer nevertheless announced that it would appeal.
“Although the court has reduced the unconstitutionally high amount of damages, we do not agree with the court’s decision on the matter,” the company said. The proceedings were marked by serious errors. These can and must be corrected. Bayer also points out that the company has prevailed in court in 14 of the most recent 20 cases. In addition, most of the lawsuits have been settled, it said.
Bayer brought the problems surrounding the glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup into the company’s possession in 2018 with the more than 60 billion dollar takeover of the US company Monsanto. In the same year, a first judgment against the DAX company followed. This set off a wave of lawsuits in the USA. In 2020, Bayer launched a billion-dollar program to settle the majority of the lawsuits without admitting liability. A good portion of the lawsuits have been dealt with, but risks remain. At the end of January, around 54,000 of around 165,000 cases were still open. The wave of glyphosate lawsuits has already cost Bayer 13 billion euros. Provisions amounted to 6.3 billion dollars (5.7 billion euros) at the end of 2023.
Source: Stern
