In Johnson v. Monsanto Company (No. A155940, A156706, filed 7/20/2020), Plaintiff Dewayne Johnson (“Plaintiff”) sued Monsanto Company (“Monsanto”) when he was diagnosed with cancer which he alleged was the result of his use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide products. The case was tried before a San Francisco jury that returned a verdict awarding Plaintiff roughly $39,300,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000,000 in punitive damages.
Plaintiff, 46 years of age, worked as a grounds manager for a school district and was responsible for spraying herbicides on district property. From 2012 to 2016, Plaintiff sprayed Monsanto products Roundup Pro and later, Ranger Pro, every work day for at least two hours. In 2014, Plaintiff was spraying Ranger Pro, the industrial version of the two products, when the hose connecting the tank to his sprayer broke, soaking him with the herbicide. Within six months, Plaintiff began to suffer severe skin rashes, and was eventually diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma before also developing squamous cell skin cancer.
Plaintiff sued Monsanto in 2016 alleging that they had failed to warn of the dangers posed by their products and on the theory of design defect. At trial, the parties stipulated to economic damages, but contested non-economic and punitive damages. Plaintiff’s counsel argued that Plaintiff was entitled to past non-economic damages of one million dollars per year for each of the years since Plaintiff was diagnosed with cancer. Plaintiff’s counsel then argued that Plaintiff was also entitled to future non-economic damages of one million dollars per year through the remainder of the average adult male’s life expectancy. At the time of the trial, Plaintiff was 46 years old and evidence was presented that a person of that age has an average life expectancy of 33 additional years. However, given Plaintiff’s cancer diagnosis, his own counsel stated that Plaintiff would not be alive in two years “absent a miracle.”...
