In a landmark case, a US jury found that Monsanto knew its Roundup and RangerPro weedkillers were dangerous and failed to warn consumers.

It is the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging a glyphosate link to cancer. The claimant in the case, groundskeeper DeWayne Johnson, is among more than 5,000 similar plaintiffs across the US.

But Monsanto still denies the danger despite the World Health ”probably carcinogenic” ruling and recent studies showing Hodgkin’s cancers are cause by glyphosate.

In addition the additives (adjuvants) of Roundup and RangerPro, are still mostly secret under patent, and new studies show them to be much more carcinogenic than the Glyphosate main ingredient which Monsanto limits itself to defending in Court .

”Famously corrupt and unscrupulous, Monsanto Corporation has now been caught covering up for 44 years the ultra toxic effects of the secret additives in combination with glyphosate in Roundup, the world’s most-used herbicide, making it up to 2000 times more toxic.

According to his lawyers, Johnson was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014 after he regularly used a form of RangerPro while working at a school in Benicia, California.

Jurors found on Friday that the company had acted with “malice” and that its weedkillers contributed “substantially” to Johnson’s terminal illness.

File Photo: Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson listens as attorney Brent Wisner (out of frame) speaks about his condition during the Monsanto trial in San Francisco, California, US, Jul 9, 2018. Josh Edelson/Pool via Reuters

The jury ordered the agricultural multi-national to pay $250 million in punitive damages together with other costs that brought the total figure to almost $290 million.Johnson’s lawyer, Brent Wisner, said the jury’s verdict showed the evidence was “overwhelming”.

see also: Study finds Roundup’s toxicity isn’t just due to glyphosate French researchers have just discovered the nasty little secret that makes the herbicide Roundup so … inert” additives that end up in Roundup … In simple English, Monsanto admits its fraud that it only used tests of the possible carcinogenicity of its so-called “active ingredient” glyphosate. Never did they submit tests of the true Roundup cocktails actually used commercially. The entire EU and US EPA “glyphosate debate” is a hoax, a nefarious fraud.

“When you are right, it is really easy to win,” he said, adding that the ruling was just “the tip of the spear” of future legal cases.

Monsanto, however, denied that glyphosate causes cancer and said it will appeal the ruling.

“The jury got it wrong,” Monsanto Vice-President Scott Partridge said outside the courthouse in San Francisco.

”All of the research data, studies and reports were subsequently sealed as trade secrets upon submission to the EPA. For over thirty years it has sat in the EPA vaults…”

Correspondents say the California ruling is likely to lead to hundreds of other claims against Monsanto, which was recently bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG.

Glyphosate is the world’s most common weedkiller and the science about its safety is still far from settled.