After judges recently reduced damage settlements in two of the cases lodged against Bayer in the ongoing Roundup saga, the result is a good news-bad news scenario for the maker of the world’s most popular herbicide.
The good news? You don’t owe as much as you did a few days ago.
The bad news? With just a few cases litigated, you still owe a @#$% ton of money, and that amount will continue to grow with more than 13,000 other cases looming and the airways (and my email inbox) cluttered with ads from law firms soliciting new clients to jump on board in what has become a case study for how to wage a propaganda war.
Critics ask why is Roundup still on the market after it has been named in thousands of cases for being responsible for causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Those same critics advocate Bayer paying through the nose, even for suits that include $2 billion in damages.
Roundup is on the market because it works. No other company has developed a non-selective herbicide as efficacious as glyphosate. It also has a product label that is several pages long and lays out explicit instructions for safe use, including guidelines for clothing - a fact lost on my next-door neighbor who was spotted just this week applying it to hundreds of square feet all while she worse shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. By the way, she is an attorney.
Hey, why read a label? In the litigious world in which we live, it is easier and more profitable to claim ignorance, point a finger and hire a lawyer.
Chemicals have had safety labels for decades and tobacco products have included warning labels since 1965. There are countless other products that have been linked to cancer, are still on the market and still do not include a safety or warning label of any kind, yet products like tobacco and toxic chemicals are low-hanging fruit in the courtroom.
Attorneys, activists and the uninformed and uneducated are not going to line up any time soon to spread pity on a multi-national chemical company that employs thousands of people around the planet. Just for fun, search Twitter on the topic and read some of the comments, including a meme that lists Roundup as one of the 12 worst products ever created. Call the Dirty Dozen, the list, that also includes DDT and Agent Orange, appears to have been developed by a “clean food” advocacy group that goes by the name GMO Free USA.
Chemicals have had safety labels for decades and tobacco products have included warning labels since 1965. There are countless other products that have been linked to cancer, are still on the market and still do not include a safety or warning label of any kind, yet products like tobacco and toxic chemicals are low-hanging fruit in the courtroom.
In three cases, a jury has ruled against Bayer to the tune of more than $2 billion. In each case, a judge has reduced punitive damage amounts that regardless of what the public believes, would still be unmanageable, even for a company like Bayer.
The reality is Bayer’s value has dropped significantly since it acquired Monsanto last year. According to Fortune and other published reports, the company’s stock has fallen by more than 40 percent in that time. Although the $2 billion in damages announced earlier this summer will be slashed to a yet-to-be-determined amount that likely will be in the neighborhood of $250 million, even a company like Bayer, which has announced plans to sell its Dr. Scholl’s footcare and Coppertone sunscreen divisions to boost profitability, can pay damages on 13,000 cases (and growing) awarding millions in damages. The legal system has two choices - eventually absolve Bayer (unlikely) or reach a realistic class-action solution that allows the company to remain viable.
The world probably can get along without tobacco, but it is difficult to imagine agriculture without access to herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Remove products like Roundup from the shelves and soon the people who complain about everything will scream about higher prices for food. Once a problem like that hits critics in their wallet you can be sure they’ll tell people to take their lymphoma and shove it.