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Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

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Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#11

Post by s1artibartfast »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #6
dylan604 wrote: post #3

Waiting for upcoming news about Monsanto spinning off the Roundup division into a new company that suddenly files for bankruptcy.

More likely Monsanto appeals and the damages get much smaller. Juries like to award much larger sums than judges.

Indeed. 250 million compensation + 2 billion punitive is an immense amount of money.

The median wrongful death settlement in California is between $250,000 and $500,000, and the average payout for car accident deaths in the United States is around $1.5 million.

I dont really understand the criteria around what counts as liability for a defective product.

Cars and guns routinely kill people, but are useful tools. Roundup or baby powder kills someone in unintuitive and statistically remote ways, and you have multi-billion dollar settlements.

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#12

Post by s1artibartfast »

viraptor wrote: post #9
google234123 wrote: post #5

This is so ridiculous, the science points to the fact that the claim that it causes cancer is not true... I really don't like the american justice system. We literally live next to coal plants that put chemicals in the air 24/7 that are certainly certainly causing cancer for people later... You can find studies showing certain meats are correlated with cancer, can we sue the grocery stores?

> You can find studies showing certain meats are correlated with cancer, can we sue the grocery stores? When a grocery store starts to take over the production chain for both the meat and the process and chemicals involved and pushing their products globally as a solution, and being litigious to a stupid degree, and ... Then yeah, I hope we can sue the grocery store involved. (As long as the studies actually hold up…

[flagged]

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#13

Post by elbasti »

dylan604 wrote: post #3

Waiting for upcoming news about Monsanto spinning off the Roundup division into a new company that suddenly files for bankruptcy.

I assume this comment is a reference to Purdue Pharma preemptively filing for bankrupcy after losing a bunch of lawsuits due to the (surely!) criminal way in which they--and the Sackler family that owns it--sold opiods.

However, as much as I hate the Sacklers, I have to pipe in here out of a respect for the truth (Gell-Mann Amnesia style).

The Purdue bankruptcy was not some sort of Machiavellian "get out of jail free" card. Rather, it is what is normally done when there are so many lawsuits on a company that it is likely they exceed the value of the company itself.

Everyone who sues and wins against Purdue will become a creditor of the company. But they will be owed much more than the company is worth. So who should get paid? The first person to sue? The last? The one worst off?

Parceling out the assets of a company among its creditors is the job of a bankruptcy court, and that is why Purdue declared bankruptcy preemptively. Not to screw over the creditors, but rather to protect them so that a judge can decide who gets what.

This is standard operating procedure when a company believes there are more creditors than it can pay, even if the creditors have not filed suit yet.

There are certainly horrible things about the way Purdue has been handled—chiefly among them that the members of the Purdue family are not being criminally prosecuted—but the whole bankruptcy thing is not one of them.

I would suggest reading Matt Levine's analyis of the whole debacle, both "The purdue bankruptcy didn't work (2021)" [0] and the follow up "Purdue Pharma's Bankruptcy works now (2023)" [1]

[0]: https://archive.is/BNzqi [1]: https://archive.is/lScV9

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#14

Post by throwup238 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #11
Seattle3503 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely Monsanto appeals and the damages get much smaller. Juries like to award much larger sums than judges.

Indeed. 250 million compensation + 2 billion punitive is an immense amount of money. The median wrongful death settlement in California is between $250,000 and $500,000, and the average payout for car accident deaths in the United States is around $1.5 million. I dont really understand the criteria around what counts as liability for a defective product. Cars and guns routinely kill people, but are useful tools. Roun…

IANAL but punitive damages are meant to punish defendants to force them to reform and deter future misconduct. They're supposed to be outrageously large, otherwise they're toothless. It's kind of the grand bargain in liability law in the US - fewer regulators and regulations but courts can hand down punishing rulings.

In a car or gun based wrongful death lawsuit, usually the defendant is the user not the manufacturer so punishing them with a $100 million ruling doesn't do anything - a $1.5 million ruling is already life changing unless they've got bulletproof liability insurance. They usually don't have anywhere near that kind of money and a ruling against them won't prevent future users from shooting or hitting someone with a car, whereas corporations are (ostensibly) able to make proper long term risk calculations.

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#15

Post by sva_ »

viraptor wrote: post #8

Different source, unpaywalled https://archive.md/mDous

I didn't notice there was a paywall upon submission. If you use bypass paywall clean[0], you won't see it either. But thanks for the link.

0. https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#16

Post by dooopdoop »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #12
viraptor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can find studies showing certain meats are correlated with cancer, can we sue the grocery stores? When a grocery store starts to take over the production chain for both the meat and the process and chemicals involved and pushing their products globally as a solution, and being litigious to a stupid degree, and ... Then yeah, I hope we can sue the grocery store involved. (As long as the studies actually hold up…

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#17

Post by hibikir »

dylan604 wrote: post #3

Waiting for upcoming news about Monsanto spinning off the Roundup division into a new company that suddenly files for bankruptcy.

Monsanto hasn't been a separate company for years: Bayer bought them out for 63 billion in 2018: A coup for the Monsanto CEO, as Bayer's total market cap today is 34 billion, and that includes all the pharma and chemical work too, not just crop science.

When they were independent, their legal team had a very successful track record, but I am told the majority of them just retired with the very large windfall they got out of that merger. Given that Bayer has a different CEO than when the merger occurred, it'd not be crazy if Bayer jettisoned all of crop science away. For all the concerns about Roundup, I'd expect the Dicamba legal risks to weigh down the value of keeping crop science at all.

It might not be remembered as as silly a merger as AOL acquiring Time Warner, but it's close.

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#18

Post by gopher_space »

google234123 wrote: post #5

This is so ridiculous, the science points to the fact that the claim that it causes cancer is not true... I really don't like the american justice system. We literally live next to coal plants that put chemicals in the air 24/7 that are certainly certainly causing cancer for people later... You can find studies showing certain meats are correlated with cancer, can we sue the grocery stores?

> This is so ridiculous, the science points to the fact that the claim that it causes cancer is not true.

I just Kagi'd it and UW says non-hodgkins up by 40% with roundup exposure. I guess the question would be "whose science".

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#19

Post by chasil »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #11
Seattle3503 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely Monsanto appeals and the damages get much smaller. Juries like to award much larger sums than judges.

Indeed. 250 million compensation + 2 billion punitive is an immense amount of money. The median wrongful death settlement in California is between $250,000 and $500,000, and the average payout for car accident deaths in the United States is around $1.5 million. I dont really understand the criteria around what counts as liability for a defective product. Cars and guns routinely kill people, but are useful tools. Roun…

This makes me think of the Oberlin College judgment. The jury awarded more than the law allowed to Gibson's bakery, so the $44 million dollar judgment was cut by the judge to $25.

Obviously, both Monsanto and Purdue are in a whole different class and scale of harm, but the law can and does cap damages. I don't know why the limits weren't made plain to the jurors, as it just drug out the procedure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson's_Bakery_v._Oberlin_C...

Re: Philadelphia Jury Hits Monsanto with $2.25B Roundup Verdict

#20

Post by dylan604 »

elbasti wrote: post #13
dylan604 wrote: post #3

Waiting for upcoming news about Monsanto spinning off the Roundup division into a new company that suddenly files for bankruptcy.

I assume this comment is a reference to Purdue Pharma preemptively filing for bankrupcy after losing a bunch of lawsuits due to the (surely!) criminal way in which they--and the Sackler family that owns it--sold opiods. However, as much as I hate the Sacklers, I have to pipe in here out of a respect for the truth (Gell-Mann Amnesia style). The Purdue bankruptcy was not some sort of Machiavellian "get out of jail free…

> I assume this comment is a reference to Purdue Pharma

sure, assume away. I was thinking more of J&J's talc=>asbestos, Alex Jones, and all of the other cases. It's not like the Sacklers are original thinkers. Some of us have memories longer than goldfishes

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