The long-running legal fight over Bayer's weedkiller Roundup has seen nearly 200,000 cancer claims filed in US courts over the past seven years and is now being turned into a political tug of war. In prior Roundup lawsuits, the US Justice Department under former President Joe Biden, had argued that consumers should be allowed to pursue damages against Germany's chemical giant, with most claims involving nonHodgkin lymphoma after long-term exposure to the pesticide.
The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers. Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson's worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts.
