Roundup: judge US opens the door to hundreds of lawsuits

(Reuters) – A u.s. federal judge allowed Tuesday that hundreds of complaints accusing the herbicide of Monsanto (NYSE:MY) glyphosate Roundup cause cancer, are brought to justice, considering that there is sufficient evidence for a jury to hear the case.

The decision of the district judge Vince Chhabria, a San Francisco follows years of litigation and weeks of hearing about the dangers of glyphosate.

Bayer (DE:BAYGN) has just finished the buyout of Monsanto to 62.5 billion us dollars (53,2 billion€).

In his report of 68 pages, the judge described the arguments of the expert of the plaintiffs of “fragile” and has completely dismissed the opinions of two scientists. But he said that the conclusions of the four other experts were sufficient for a jury to possibly conclude that the glyphosate can cause cancer in humans.

More than 400 farmers, landscapers and private individuals, in which the complaints were filed collectively in front of the judge, accuse the herbicide of Monsanto to be the cause of lymphomas non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that originates in lymphocytes.

Monsanto has denied the allegations and said in a press release that it would continue to defend his case with solid evidence proving that “there is absolutely no connection between glyphosate and cancer”.

Robin Greenwald and Aimee Wagstaff, two of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, did not respond to immediate requests for comment.

Monsanto pointed out that more than 800 studies and analyses have concluded that the herbicides based on glyphosate does not cause cancer.

The american agency of environmental protection concluded in September last, after decades of studies, that glyphosate was probably not carcinogenic to humans. In contrast, the world health Organization (WHO) has classified, for its part, the glyphosate among the products “likely to be carcinogenic to humans”.

(Tina Bellon, Juliette Rouillon for French service, edited by Eric Faye)