A tentative ruling earlier this month revealed a significant reduction would be made to the $2.055 billion verdict that surfaced as the largest to date in a slew of lawsuits filed against Roundup’s Monsanto.
In May, a jury awarded the amount of $2 billion in punitive damages and $55 million in compensatory damages to a California couple who developed cancer after years of exposure to popular weedkiller Roundup.
Experts immediately predicted the damages award would be slashed. With the tentative ruling, the California judge said she was considering an award closer to $250 million, as $2 billion exceeded legal precedent.
This past Thursday, the award was officially reduced to $86.7 million according to Reuters.
Roundup has been gaining much attention this year as thousands of lawsuits have been filed claiming its main ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer.
Not everyone supports this claim. In fact, there’s plenty of debate.
The Environmental Protection Agency stands by its original statement that glyphosate is not a carcinogen, while the World Health Organization suggests it is.
Meanwhile, the University of Washington analyzed published studies on the subject and found that exposure to the particular herbicide increased the risk of cancer by 41 percent.
Still, Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer, argue the public has not been misled or endangered by the herbicide. But among the 13,400 plaintiffs in the United States who have filed lawsuits against the company are groundskeepers and formerly avid users of the weedkiller.