Products Liability Law Reporter

Edwin Hardeman began using Roundup herbicides in the early 1980s. He sprayed Roundup on his property to control poison oak and weeds and used the product regularly for many years. In 2015, he was diagnosed as having stage III non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), an aggressive condition. Now 70, he has undergone chemotherapy and has required continued monitoring and treatment.

Hardeman sued Monsanto Co., alleging that Roundup’s design was defective, that the product lacked sufficient warnings of the risk of NHL, and that the defendant negligently failed to warn about the product’s NHL risk. The plaintiff asserted that the defendant failed to conduct sufficient testing to determine whether Roundup was safe for use, concealed information that Roundup was unsafe and dangerous, and placed the herbicide into the stream of commerce when it knew or should have known that the product posed a grave risk of cancer.

The jury determined that the plaintiff proved by a preponderance of the evidence that his exposure to Roundup was a substantial factor in causing his NHL. It awarded more than $80 million, including $75 million in punitive damages.

Citation: Hardeman v. Monsanto Co., No. 4:16-cv-00525-DMR (N.D. Cal. Mar. 27, 2019).

Plaintiff counsel: AAJ member Jennifer A. Moore, Louisville, Ky.; AAJ members Aimee H. Wagstaff and David Wool, both of Lakewood, Colo.; and AAJ member Kathryn Forgie, Oakland, Calif.

Plaintiff experts: Beate Ritz, epidemiology, Los Angeles; Dennis Weisenburger, hematopathology, Duarte, Calif.; Chadi Nabhan, oncology, Chicago; and Chris Portier, toxicology, Thun, Switzerland.