The jury in Bayer AG’s third Roundup weedkiller trial was urged by a plaintiffs’ lawyer to consider socking the company with $1 billion in damages as punishment for covering up the health risks of the herbicide for decades.
 
The aggressive demand on behalf an elderly couple who claim they got cancer from exposure to Roundup shows that plaintiffs are becoming bolder after winning the first two trials against Bayer, which together yielded $159 million in damages.
 
The couple’s attorney said the billion-dollar request is roughly based on the gross profit of $892 million recorded in 2017 by the agricultural-chemicals division of Monsanto, which was making Roundup long before Bayer acquired the company last year.
 
“That is a number that changes things,” lawyer Brent Wisner said Wednesday at the close of a trial in state court in Oakland, California. He also asked the jury to award about $55 million to compensate Alva and Alberta Pilliod for economic damages like hospital bills and noneconomic losses such as pain and suffering.
 
Click Here to read more.