Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have filed a lawsuit against Monsanto on behalf of 40 Californians who allege that exposure to Monsanto's Roundup weed killer caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

Filed in Alameda County Superior Court for the State of California, the six-count complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages for wrongful death and personal injuries against Defendants Monsanto Co. and Wilbur Ellis Company, LLC.

In 1970, Missouri-based Monsanto discovered the herbicidal properties of glyphosate and began marketing it in 1974 under the brand name Roundup^®. California-based Wilbur Ellis sold and distributed Roundup in California.

In 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans. The IARC report further concluded that the cancers most associated with glyphosate exposure are non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other hematopoietic cancers.

Per the lawsuit, Monsanto continues to proclaim that glyphosate-based herbicides, including Roundup, create no unreasonable risks to human health or to the environment.

To prove that Roundup is safe for human use, the lawsuit alleges that Monsanto championed falsified data and attacked legitimate studies that revealed the herbicide's dangers, while also ghostwriting studies and leading a prolonged campaign of misinformation to convince government agencies and consumers that Roundup was safe.

"Monsanto's newly released documents expose a culture corrupt enough to shock the company's most jaded critics," says environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is working with Baum Hedlund on the Roundup litigation.

"Those papers show sociopathic company officials ghostwriting scientific studies to conceal Roundup's risks from Monsanto's regulators and customers, including food consumers, farmers and the public. One wonders about the perverse morality that incentivizes executives to lie so easily and to put profits before human life. All humanity will benefit when a jury sees this scheme and gives this behemoth a new set of incentives."

Monsanto is facing more than 700 individual claims filed in state and federal courts throughout the country. Most of the claims have been filed in St. Louis City and in the multidistrict litigation (MDL 2741) in federal court in Northern California.  

The case is captioned Pennie v. Monsanto Co. and Wilbur Ellis Company LLC, Case No: RG17853420.

Photos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/gp/151250716@N07/26X13Z

More details here: https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/roundup-cancer-lawsuit-alameda/