Bayer AG on Monday began defending itself in a second trial alleging its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, a case the German chemicals and pharmaceuticals company is under pressure to win to help stop a downward spiral of its share price.
Jurors heard competing scientific viewpoints on whether 70-year-old California resident Edwin Hardeman developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma because of decadeslong Roundup use on his property. A lawyer for Mr. Hardeman previewed scientific studies she said will prove that Roundup is to blame, followed by a lawyer for Bayer arguing that other risk factors in Mr. Hardeman’s health history are more likely the cause.
The closely watched trial in U.S. District Court in San Francisco is the first Bayer has faced since fully taking control of Monsanto Co., the pesticide and seed maker it acquired last summer — along with Monsanto’s thousands of Roundup lawsuits.
Unlike in an earlier trial in California state court that resulted in a loss for Monsanto, jurors in this trial will first hear evidence solely on whether Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate caused Mr. Hardeman’s cancer. Only if jurors side with the plaintiff will they then hear evidence of alleged misconduct by the company.
Bayer lawyer Brian Stekloff told jurors during his opening statement that Roundup didn’t cause Mr. Hardeman’s cancer, and that more than 800 studies prove the product is safe. Mr. Hardeman’s lawyer Aimee Wagstaff, meanwhile, told jurors she planned to give them all the scientific “pieces of the puzzle” they need to answer the question in the affirmative.
The challenge of splitting the trial in two became apparent during opening statements, as U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria chastised Ms. Wagstaff without the jurors present for what he called repeatedly overstepping the bounds of what was intended to be included in the science-only phase of the trial.
The judge also kept tight control over Bayer’s lawyer, telling Mr. Stekloff that snippets of depositions included in his presentation weren’t appropriate to show the jury.
Bayer’s stock has lost some 30% since a California state jury in August held Monsanto liable for a man’s cancer and issued a $289.2 million verdict. A judge later reduced the verdict to $78.5 million but upheld that Monsanto acted with malice, a decision the company is appealing. Bayer has said it faces around 9,300 similar claims.
Analysts expect the litigation to continue to drag down shares until there is more clarity over potential liabilities. “It’s important for Bayer to win one of the next trials,” said Manfred Manns, a portfolio manager at Union Investment, which holds roughly 1% of Bayer.
If Bayer wins, shares could jump more than 10%, predicts Gunther Zechmann, chemicals analyst at Bernstein Research. Analysts currently forecast Bayer to face total liabilities of between EUR5 billion (about $5.68 billion) and EUR10 billion from the litigation.
Like Bayer, Mr. Hardeman’s lawyers say they are confident the science is on their side. Ms. Wagstaff on Monday walked jurors through the three prongs of science she said will prove their case: epidemiology studies of human populations, animal studies and cellular studies.
The seven female and two male jurors heard that Mr. Hardeman regularly sprayed two types of concentrated Roundup to control poison oak and weeds on his sprawling property for around 26 years starting in the late 1980s. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015 and is now in remission.
Bayer told jurors that Mr. Hardeman had several risk factors for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, including previously contracting hepatitis C and B. The company’s lawyer also described non-Hodgkin lymphoma as one of the most common types of cancer and said its cause is often unknown. The paid experts who will testify about Roundup’s dangers at trial, he said, have never warned patients about the weedkiller or spoken at conferences or in classrooms about the product.
“They do not know what causes cancer,” he said of doctors who diagnose non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The trial is the first of several scheduled to take place this year in California federal and state courts and Missouri state court.
Meanwhile, the divisive debate over glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, continues. The chemical’s safety came under global scrutiny after the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 classified the substance as likely having the potential to cause cancer in humans. That finding ran counter to conclusions by the Environmental Protection Agency and other chemical regulators, but prompted a wave of lawsuits and regulatory challenges in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.
A French court last month revoked approval for one of Bayer’s glyphosate-based weedkillers, arguing that it might cause cancer. Bayer said it fundamentally disagreed with the decision and is considering an appeal.
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