The First Appellate District court has found that in the glyphosate $2 billion jury award already lopped down to $82 million, while “counsel’s conduct was clearly improper” it wasn’t heinous enough to prejudice the trial results and did not violate federal law. Their lawyer told jurors not to touch a spray bottle without gloves, which is certainly prejudicial to anyone with a clue about science, but the lawsuit was not about science, it was about emotion - and the attorney trying to get rich suing Monsanto simply manufactured emotion.
The bottle contained water.
Not all of the judges agreed with even that amount, saying that even though the award is a fraction of the $2 billion weirdness originally thrown out, $68 million is still “grossly excessive”, since there was no scientific evidence that Roundup can cause any human disease, much less non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a married couple.
All they could agree on in in Pilliod v. Monsanto was that Monsanto was not a very nice company. Well, that's now how lawsuits should be decided, or Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace would be out of existence instead of having a great track record shaking down companies.
But this likely won't end there. Unlike other companies, Bayer may not be willing to settle and assume an appearance of guilt when the science is on their side.
