2018 1022

http://healthimpactnews.com/2018/judge-says-she-will-overturn-jury-conviction-of-
monsanto-and-250-million-in-damages-over-glyphosate-injuries/?fbclid=IwAR0rQ-
j07Zt4XP3UaIMWFpmppMilCQYd2uDD1iZzUA0YKHI7wNoXf9De-nc

October 22, 2018

Judge Says She Will Overturn Jury Conviction of
Monsanto and Nullify $250 Million Award in
Damages Over Glyphosate Injuries

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos. Image Source.

by San Francisco Chronicle

Excerpts:

A San Francisco judge cast doubt [recently] on a jury’s $289 million damage
award to a former Bay Area groundskeeper who was diagnosed with cancer after
frequently spraying school grounds with a widely used weed-killer manufactured
by Monsanto Co.

Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos said in a tentative ruling that she would
likely overturn $250 million in punitive damages because there was no
convincing evidence that Monsanto had knowingly manufactured a harmful
product or acted “despicably” toward the plaintiff, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson.
Bolanos did not announce a final ruling, but showed little indication during the
hearing that she was reconsidering her tentative decision on punitive damages.
“I’m not following your argument,” she told Miller at one point after the lawyer
said Monsanto had failed to properly test its product or study its effects.

Full Story.

Monsanto case: Jurors urge judge not to overturn $289

million award
by Bob Egelko
San Francisco Chronicle

Excerpts:

Jurors who awarded $289 million to a former school groundskeeper who is dying
of cancer are imploring a San Francisco judge to reconsider her tentative
decision to overturn most of the damages against Monsanto Co., manufacturer of
the weed killer that they found to be the cause of the man’s illness.

“You may not have been convinced by the evidence but we were,” juror Gary Kitahata said in a letter to Superior Court
Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who is considering Monsanto’s requests to reduce the damages or overturn the entire verdict. “I
urge you to respect and honor our verdict and the six weeks of our lives that we dedicated to this trial.”
Another juror, Robert Howard, said in his letter to the judge that the jury had paid
“studious attention” to the evidence, closely followed Bolanos’ instruction and
deliberated for several days. The possibility that “our unanimous verdict could be
summarily overturned demeans our system of justice and shakes my confidence
in that system,” Howard wrote.

Full Story.

See also:

Monsanto Glyphosate Cancer Trial Update: Biased Judge? Key

Evidence Not Allowed

More information about Glyphosate.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Judge-in-Roundup-trial-may-overturn-
nearly-all-of-13297825.php
Judge in Roundup trial may overturn nearly all of Bay Area
man’s $289 million jury award

Bob Egelko Oct. 10, 2018 Updated: Oct. 10, 2018 7:43 p.m.

Dewayne Johnson (center), former groundskeeper for Benicia schools, may see
considerably less than the $289 million in damages awarded by a San Francisco
jury in August.
Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle
A San Francisco judge cast doubt Wednesday on a jury’s $289 million damage award to a
former Bay Area groundskeeper who was diagnosed with cancer after frequently
spraying school grounds with a widely used weed-killer manufactured by Monsanto Co.

Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos said in a tentative ruling that she would likely
overturn $250 million in punitive damages because there was no convincing evidence
that Monsanto had knowingly manufactured a harmful product or acted “despicably”
toward the plaintiff, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson. At a two-hour hearing later Wednesday,
Bolanos suggested state law may also require her to throw out $31 million that jurors
awarded for Johnson’s reduced life expectancy.

The company’s lawyer, George Lombardi, argued that the entire verdict should be
overturned because there was insufficient evidence that its herbicide, glyphosate,
commonly marketed as Roundup, is dangerous or caused Johnson’s cancer. Johnson’s
lawyer, Michael Miller, urged the judge to respect the jury’s verdict.

Bolanos did not announce a final ruling, but showed little indication during the hearing
that she was reconsidering her tentative decision on punitive damages. “I’m not
following your argument,” she told Miller at one point after the lawyer said Monsanto
had failed to properly test its product or study its effects.

Glyphosate, the world’s leading herbicide, was classified as a probable human carcinogen
in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health
Organization. California health officials also list the chemical as a cause of cancer. But
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found it to be a safe product, and it
remains legal in the United States and Europe.

Johnson, now 46 and a Vallejo resident, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
in October 2014 and with a more aggressive form of the cancer in March 2015. One of his
doctors testified that he is unlikely to survive to 2020. He attended abut half of
Wednesday’s hearing and did not comment afterward.

Nationwide, about 4,000 lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto by individuals who
claim they were sickened by Roundup. Johnson’s case was the first to go to trial.

He was a groundskeeper and pest-control manager for the Benicia Unified School
District from 2012 until May 2016. His job included spraying glyphosate, in the high-
concentration brand called Ranger Pro, from 50-gallon drums 20 to 30 times a year for
two to three hours a day.

He testified he wore protective clothing, including a sturdy jacket, goggles and a face
mask, but said he couldn’t fully protect his face from wind-blown spray. And twice, he
told the jury, he got drenched with the herbicide — once when a spray hose became
detached from a truck that was hauling it, and another time when a backpack container
he was carrying leaked.

After hearing further testimony from opposing medical researchers and physicians, the
jury found unanimously in August that Monsanto was responsible for Johnson’s illness
and should have known of the dangers posed by glyphosate. In awarding punitive
damages, the jury found that the company had “acted with malice or oppression” when it
supplied the herbicide to Johnson’s employer without disclosing its possible life-
threatening effects, and when company officials failed to return Johnson’s phone calls
after he became ill.

But Bolanos, in her tentative ruling, said Johnson’s lawyers “presented no evidence that
any Monsanto employee believed at any time that exposure to Monsanto’s (glyphosate)
products cause” non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Even if a Monsanto official deliberately
ignored Johnson’s queries, which the company denies, “not returning a phone call does
not rise to the level of despicable conduct,” the judge said.

At the hearing, she also questioned whether the largest portion of Johnson’s remaining
damage award, $1 million for each year of his life expectancy before the cancer diagnosis,
was authorized by California law.

Miller said state appellate courts have approved damages for “loss of enjoyment of life
for the years that are taken away from you.”

Not so, said Lombardi, Monsanto’s lawyer.”The law is that you do not get awards of
future economic damages for periods of time beyond your (current) life expectancy,” he
said. If Bolanos agrees, the damage award would be reduced to just over $8 million.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

Bob Egelko
Follow Bob on:
https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/egelko

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30

years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and
occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento,
and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked
for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then
joined The Chronicle in November 2000.

His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the

Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from
McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the
bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978,
the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her
removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the
battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Past Articles from this Author:

 SF judge throws out charges against homeless people

camping on sidewalk
 State high court rejects Berkeley group’s suit to drain Hetch
Hetchy Reservoir
 Appeals court says SRO law violates owners’ property
rights

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Monsanto-case-Jurors-urge-judge-not-to-
overturn-13309317.php?fbclid=IwAR3-
jiLwkFxIVOmROEo4hlxSWvL_5hdRCwswqWD2YCn1tiu22gUPUIVhGVM#photo-
9785655

OCAL // BAY AREA & STATE

Monsanto case: Jurors urge judge not to overturn $289
million award

Bob Egelko Oct. 15, 2018 Updated: Oct. 15, 2018 7:48 p.m.

Jurors who awarded $289 million to a former school groundskeeper who is dying of
cancer are imploring a San Francisco judge to reconsider her tentative decision to
overturn most of the damages against Monsanto Co., manufacturer of the weed killer
that they found to be the cause of the man’s illness.
“You may not have been convinced by the evidence but we were,” juror Gary Kitahata
said in a letter to Superior Court Judge Suzanne Bolanos, who is considering Monsanto’s
requests to reduce the damages or overturn the entire verdict. “I urge you to respect and
honor our verdict and the six weeks of our lives that we dedicated to this trial.”

Another juror, Robert Howard, said in his letter to the judge that the jury had paid
“studious attention” to the evidence, closely followed Bolanos’ instruction and
deliberated for several days. The possibility that “our unanimous verdict could be
summarily overturned demeans our system of justice and shakes my confidence in that
system,” Howard wrote.

The two were among eight jurors and two alternates who attended a public hearing
Wednesday at which Bolanos indicated she was likely to overturn the $250 million in
punitive damages that the jury had awarded to Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, and possibly
another $31 million in damages for his shortened life expectancy, reducing the award to
just over $8 million.

Kitahata, owner of a financial consulting company, said Monday that the jurors attended
the hearing “to support the verdict,” and had been in touch with fellow jurors who all
appeared to share their view. Howard, an artist and residential contractor, said two more
jurors had written letters to Bolanos endorsing their verdict.

Asked for comment, Bayer AG, which owns Monsanto, said its challenges to the verdict
“raise issues of law that are properly addressed by Judge Bolanos.”

Judges have the authority to overturn jury verdicts or modify them by reducing damages.
They are not empowered, however, to overturn a jury’s factual findings if there is any
evidence to support them.

Johnson, 46, of Vallejo, was a groundskeeper and pest-control manager for the Benicia
Unified School District from 2012 until May 2016. His job included spraying Monsanto’s
herbicide, glyphosate, in a high-concentration brand called Ranger Pro, from 50-gallon
drums 20 to 30 times a year for two to three hours a day.

Johnson testified during the trial that he was exposed to windblown spray, despite
protective clothing, and was drenched twice with the liquid when the equipment he was
using broke. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in October 2014 and with
a more aggressive form of the cancer in March 2015.

One of his doctors testified that Johnson is unlikely to survive to 2020. His case was the
first to go to trial among about 4,000 suits against Monsanto nationwide by people who
claim they developed cancer or other serious illnesses from exposure to Roundup, the
company’s widely used glyphosate product.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health
Organization, classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015. But the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency has found it to be a safe product, and it remains legal
in the United States and Europe.
After a trial that included testimony by medical experts on both sides, the jury found
unanimously in August that Monsanto was responsible for his illness and should have
known of the product’s dangers. Jurors awarded damages for Johnson’s financial losses,
pain and suffering, and loss of life expectancy. And in awarding $250 million in punitive
damages, jurors found that Monsanto had acted maliciously by supplying the herbicide
to the school district without disclosing its life-threatening effects, and by failing to
return Johnson’s phone calls after he became ill.

In a tentative ruling last week, however, Bolanos said Johnson’s lawyers presented no
evidence that any Monsanto employee had known or believed that its products could
cause cancer. She also questioned whether California law authorized the jury’s award of
$1 million for each year of his life expectancy before the cancer diagnosis.

Her final ruling is due by next Monday and could be appealed.

Both Howard and Kitihata said the judge had allowed the jury to decide Monsanto’s
responsibility for Johnson’s illness, based on the evidence they heard, and now appeared
to be backtracking from her own decision while second-guessing their conclusions.

Testimony about scientific studies of the product, and about Monsanto’s possible
influence on the U.S. agency that allowed its continued sale, showed “there were serious
questions about the safety of glyphosate and Roundup” when the company supplied it to
Johnson’s employer, Howard said Monday. He said Monsanto’s expert witnesses, whose
sworn depositions were viewed by the jury, were “not credible — they’re nervous, shifty-
eyed, used linguistic gymnastics not to answer questions.”

In his letter to Bolanos, Howard said the damages for each year of Johnson’s reduced life
expectancy were based squarely on the judge’s instruction that jurors could award him
compensation for “loss of enjoyment of life” due to his illness.

Kitihata told Bolanos that when evidence was presented about Johnson’s life expectancy
before his cancer diagnosis, she had never raised questions about the jury’s use of that
evidence to award damages. To do so now, he said, would be “rewarding (the company)
for shortening Mr. Johnson’s life expectancy.”

“She had a chance to raise these questions during trial and even during jury
deliberations,” Kitihata said Monday. “I thought it was the jury’s role to be the judge of
evidence.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @BobEgelko

Bob Egelko
Follow Bob on:
https://www.facebook.com/SFChronicle/egelko

Bob Egelko has been a reporter since June 1970. He spent 30

years with the Associated Press, covering news, politics and
occasionally sports in Los Angeles, San Diego and Sacramento,
and legal affairs in San Francisco from 1984 onward. He worked
for the San Francisco Examiner for five months in 2000, then
joined The Chronicle in November 2000.

His beat includes state and federal courts in California, the

Supreme Court and the State Bar. He has a law degree from
McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and is a member of the
bar. Coverage has included the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978,
the appointment of Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court and her
removal by the voters, the death penalty in California and the
battles over gay rights and same-sex marriage.

**********************************************************************
Comment sent to Allen Murray via Facebook Messenger…

Either the Plaintiff (Victim suffering from Cancer) and/or the Jurors can do a CONDITIONAL
ACCEPTANCE in this case against the Judge who is considering overturning the $289 Million Jury
Award... by counter-offering with...

We accept your offer, Judge, on the condition that you deposit a Bond for a penal lump-sum in the
amount of $300 Million Dollars to cover any potential liability that rests upon you for unjustifiably
overturning the Jury Award of $289 Million which will harm and injure the Plaintiff.

Otherwise, if you fail to provide said Bond accordingly then you agree to have all personal income
including but not limited to: earned income salary, earned interest, pension fund benefits, rents, and
royalties (whether in your name or in the name of a trust where you or your other interests may be
named as beneficiaries) forfeited and seized for the benefit of the Plaintiff and to also be impeached
from your position as Judge and for you to spend the rest of your life imprisoned in the California state
penitentiary known as San Quentin Prison if your decision to move forward to overturn and reverse the
Jury Award of $289 Dollars causes any damage, harm, and/or injury whatsoever to the Plaintiff, or you
agree to be sentenced to death by hanging for committing treason against the American people for
overreaching the authority of the Jurors in violation of the Constitution for the United States... the
Choice of Justice is yours and in your hands... the choice is yours.