Hundreds of lawsuits alleging Roundup weed killer causes cancer could present expert testimony linking the herbicide to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Judge allows lawsuits claiming Monsanto weed killer Roundup causes cancer to go forward
The company that makes Roundup, Monsanto, has strongly denied that there is any connection between their product and cancer. 

by Associated Press 

July 11, 2018
Hundreds of lawsuits have alleged that Roundup causes cancer.Josh Edelson / AFP - Getty Images



SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Hundreds of lawsuits alleging Roundup weed killer causes cancer cleared a big hurdle this week when a federal judge ruled that cancer victims and their families could present expert testimony linking the herbicide to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said evidence that the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — can cause the disease seemed "rather weak." Still, the opinions of three experts linking glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma were not "junk science" that should be excluded from a trial, the judge ruled on Tuesday.

The lawsuits say agrochemical giant Monsanto, which makes Roundup, long knew about the cancer risk but failed to warn people. The ruling allows the claims to move forward, though the judge warned it could be a "daunting challenge" to convince him to allow a jury to hear testimony that glyphosate was responsible for individual cancer diagnoses.


Many government regulators have rejected a link between cancer and glyphosate. Monsanto has vehemently denied such a connection, saying hundreds of studies have established that the chemical is safe.

The company is facing hundreds of lawsuits in state and federal courts that claim otherwise. Chhabria is presiding over more than 400 of them.

A separate trial is under way in San Francisco in a lawsuit by a school groundskeeper dying of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma — the first case a jury has heard alleging Roundup caused cancer.

In response to Chhabria's ruling, Monsanto Vice President Scott Partridge noted the judge excluded some of the plaintiffs' experts and called the opinions of those he is allowing to testify "shaky."

"Moving forward, we will continue to defend these lawsuits with robust evidence that proves there is absolutely no connection between glyphosate and cancer," Partridge said in a statement. "We have sympathy for anyone suffering from cancer, but the science clearly shows that glyphosate was not the cause."

Michael Baum, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he was still reviewing the ruling but was pleased the judge rejected Monsanto's effort to have the lawsuits thrown out.


"We look forward to taking the next step — getting our clients their day in court," he said in a statement.

The judge wanted to determine whether the science behind the claim that glyphosate can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had been properly tested and met other requirements to be considered valid.

Chhabria spent a week in March hearing dueling testimony from epidemiologists. He peppered them with questions about potential strengths and weaknesses of research on the cancer risk of glyphosate.

Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, testified for the plaintiffs that her review of scientific literature led her to conclude that glyphosate and glyphosate-based compounds such as Roundup can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Ritz said a 2017 National Institutes of Health study that found no association between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had major flaws.

Monsanto brought in its own expert, Lorelei Mucci, a cancer epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who praised the 2017 study.

"When you look at the body of epidemiological literature on this topic, there's no evidence of a positive association between glyphosate and NHL risk," she said of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

In his ruling Tuesday, the judge said Ritz and Mucci could both testify before a jury.

Monsanto developed glyphosate in the 1970s, and the weed killer is now sold in more than 160 countries. Farmers in California, the most agriculturally productive state in the U.S., use it on more than 200 types of crops. Homeowners use it on their lawns and gardens.

The herbicide came under increasing scrutiny after the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a "probable human carcinogen" in 2015.

A flurry of lawsuits against Monsanto followed, and California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer. Monsanto has attacked the international research agency's opinion as an outlier.

The Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.

A federal judge in Sacramento has blocked California from requiring that Roundup carry a label stating that it is known to cause cancer, saying the warning is misleading because almost all regulators have concluded that there is no evidence glyphosate is carcinogenic

A Walt Disney World worker, Juan Alberto Ojeda, 33, was killed Monday when the Toro utility cart he was working on jumped a curb, ran into chainlink fence, then fell on him

Disney worker died after utility cart fell on him, sheriff's report says



A Walt Disney World employee was killed in an accident, the company confirmed on Monday.

Gabrielle Russon and Michael Williams
Contact Reporters Orlando Sentinel




A Walt Disney World worker was killed Monday when the utility cart he was working on jumped a curb, ran into chainlink fence, then fell on him, an Orange County Sheriff’s Office report revealed Tuesday.

The accident killed Juan Alberto Ojeda, 33, of Kissimmee, who had been working on the cart’s battery. He was later declared dead at the scene, a backstage area used by Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort for vehicle maintenance.

Another employee, Danny Vazquez, who was showing a new hire around, witnessed the accident from 20 yards away. Vazquez heard “a screeching sound and turned to see a Toro utility vehicle drive up onto a curb” and travel several feet up the fence before falling on top of him, the report said.

Ojeda asked Vazquez to back the red cart off him and then said he couldn’t breathe before he fell unconscious, the report said. 

Vazquez estimated the cart drove 6 feet into the fence before coming back down on the ground on top of Ojeda. The new hire, Josh Willner, estimated it was closer to 3 feet, the report said.

Willner and Vazquez tried to lift the cart off Ojeda but it was too heavy, and they feared hurting him even more if they drove it, according to the report.

Disney declined to comment on the report Tuesday, other than to say the accident happened in a non-public area.

The federal Occupational and Safety Health Administration was investigating as well but would not release details Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a second accident hours later on the theme park property left another Disney employee injured, officials said.

The accident was at about 10:30 p.m. at 2901 Osceola Parkway — the address for Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge — sheriff’s spokeswoman Deputy Ingrid Tejada-Monforte said.

A man had fallen and injured himself before calling 911, according to the sheriff’s office. He was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.

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Walt Disney World Cast Member Juan Alberto Ojeda, 33, was killed on Monday after he became trapped under a utility vehicle he was working on, according to a report from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

The report revealed that the utility cart Ojeda was working on drove onto the curb, ran into a chain link fence and fell on top of him. Ojeda was working on the cart’s battery when he died at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, according to the report.

Two witnesses, Cast Member Danny Vazquez and new hire Josh Willner, told police they saw the accident happen from about 20 yards away. Vazquez told authorities he was showing Willner around the facility when he heard “a screeching sound and turned to see a Toro utility vehicle drive up onto a curb and into a chain link fence.” The men said they saw the vehicle move six feet up the fence before falling on top of Ojeda.

Vazquez said he was asked by Ojeda to move the cart off of him, but refused out of fear he would further injur Ojeda. The 33-year-old said he couldn’t breathe before he fell unconscious, according to the report. Willner said the cart was still running and that he turned off the vehicle, but left the keys in the ignition.

SOURCE: Newsweek