Monsanto case: Bay Area man with cancer awarded $289 million in damages

Dewayne Johnson (center), former groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District, leaves Department 504 with his wife Araceli Johnson (right) behind attorney Brent Wisner (left) at Superior Court of California during the Monsanto trial on Monday, July 23, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif. less Dewayne Johnson (center), former groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District, leaves Department 504 with his wife Araceli Johnson (right) behind attorney Brent Wisner (left) at Superior Court of ... more Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 33 Caption Close Monsanto case: Bay Area man with cancer awarded $289 million in damages 1 / 33 Back to Gallery

The first trial on whether the world’s most widely used herbicide causes cancer came to an explosive ending Friday — a San Francisco jury’s award of $289 million in damages to a man diagnosed with a lethal illness while spraying school grounds with a weed-killer manufactured by Monsanto Co.

The jury found unanimously that Monsanto was responsible for Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and should have known of the dangers posed by the herbicide glyphosate, which it markets as Roundup and the more-concentrated Ranger Pro. The jury also found that Monsanto had “acted with malice or oppression” when it supplied glyphosate to Johnson’s employer, the Benicia Unified School District, without disclosing its potentially life-threatening effects.

The company denies that glyphosate is dangerous and says it will appeal.

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The verdict could be a forerunner for the 4,000 lawsuits that have been filed across the country by individuals who claim they were sickened by Roundup. Johnson’s case was the first to go to trial.

The jury’s decision also amounted to a rebuke of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has long classified glyphosate as safe and has not restricted its use, despite an other agencies’ findings that the herbicide probably causes cancer.

At a post-verdict news conference in his lawyers’ office, Johnson, 46, of Vallejo, said he hoped his case was just the beginning.

“The cause is way bigger than me,” he said. “Hopefully this thing will start to get the attention that it needs to get right.”

Johnson was first 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.

The jury awarded $2.3 million in damages for his past and future economic losses and $37 million for pain and emotional distress — $1 million for each year of what would have been his normal life expectancy after 2014. The remaining $250 million was in punitive damages for malicious or oppressive conduct.

Johnson’s lawyers said Monsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer AG, has $6.1 billion in holdings.

Jurors deliberated 2½ days after four weeks of testimony. The verdict required votes from only nine of the 12 jurors to be final, but they were unanimous except for on the amount of punitive damages, which drew a dissent from one juror. In polling after the verdict, she did not tell the judge whether she favored a greater or lesser amount.

Environmental advocates celebrated the outcome.

“Mr. Johnson’s brave decision to spend his dying days fighting Monsanto to prove the dangers of Roundup is part of a global awakening to the long-term health and environmental costs of our careless addiction to pesticides,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Monsanto was unyielding, saying its position is supported by the EPA, the National Institutes of Health and agencies around the world.

“We will appeal this decision and continue to vigorously defend this product, which has a 40-year history of safe use,” said Scott Partridge, a Monsanto vice president.

Johnson was a groundskeeper and pest-control manager for Benicia schools 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 the first drenching in 2014, he said, he got rashes on his skin that did not respond to treatment. Welts and lesions soon appeared on his legs, arms, face and eyelids. His first cancer diagnoses came soon afterward.

Johnson has undergone chemotherapy and is considering a bone-marrow transplant.

The jury also heard from Johnson’s wife, Araceli, a nurse practitioner, who said she now works 14 hours a day at two jobs to pay the bills. The couple has two children.

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. In 2017, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment listed it as a chemical known to cause cancer. Monsanto held the initial patent and remains its leading distributor.

Despite the agencies’ health concerns, glyphosate remains legal in the U.S. and Europe. Monsanto’s lawyers noted the EPA has never found glyphosate to be a cause of cancer, and told the jury that both the EPA and European health regulators had conducted new studies after the international agency’s assessment and had reaffirmed their previous safety findings.

Johnson’s lawyers, in turn, accused Monsanto of mounting a propaganda campaign to discredit the international agency and of hiding evidence that allegedly would have shown the herbicide’s dangers. Each side presented medical experts to support its case.

Monsanto also said none of Johnson’s physicians had determined the cause of his cancer. One of Johnson’s doctors testified, however, that as Johnson’s condition worsened in 2015, she asked the school district to let him stop spraying glyphosate. Johnson said he finally refused to use the chemical in January 2016, four months before leaving the job.

He also said he called Monsanto’s hotline twice, in 2014 and 2015, described his symptoms and asked if the herbicide might be the cause. Company representatives said someone would call him back, but no one did, he said.

Bob Egelko and Peter Fimrite are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com andpfimrite@sfchronice.com Twitter: @BobEgelko and @pfimrite