By Louis Goss, Dow Jones
Shares in Bayer fell 5% on Monday after a Philadelphia jury told the German pharmaceutical company to pay $2.25 billion to a man who says he developed cancer due to using its Roundup branded weedkiller.
A jury at Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas awarded John McKivision $2 billion in punitive damages and an additional $250 million in compensatory damages in ruling the claimant developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of exposure to Bayer’s glyphosate-based weedkiller.
Shares in Bayer (DE:BAYA) fell 5% on Monday having lost 46% of their value over the past 12 months.
Bayer has faced around 165,000 lawsuits from Roundup customers who claim they developed cancer due to using the glyphosate-based weedkiller, which was first developed by Monsanto in the 1970s, prior to the U.S. company’s acquisition by Bayer for $66 billion in 2018.
“The jury’s punitive damages award sends a clear message that this multi-national corporation needs top to bottom change,” McKivision’s attorneys Tom Kline and Jason Itkin told Reuters. Lawyers acting for McKivision were contacted by MarketWatch for comment.
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