A US judge has upheld a jury verdict against Bayer subsidiary Monsanto in a historic case regarding the cancer danger of some of its weed killer products, but slashed the punitive damages award.
The jury found the company's glyphosate-based weed-killers,including RoundUp, responsible for a man's terminal cancer.
The verdict wiped 10% off the value of the company and marked the first such decision against Monsanto, which faces more than 8,000 similar lawsuits in the United States.
While Judge Suzanne Bolanos denied Monsanto's request for a new trial, she cut the $289m award to $78m to comply with the law regarding how punitive damages awards must be calculated.
Monsanto, which denies the allegations, had asked the judge to throw out the entire original $289m verdict or order a new trial on the punitive damages portion.
"The courts decision to reduce the punitive damage award by more than $200m is a step in the right direction, but we continue to believe that the liability verdict and damage awards are not supported by the evidence at trial or the law and plan to file an appeal with the California Court of Appeal," Bayer said in a statement.
The German company, which bought Monsanto this year for $63bn, says decades of scientific studies and real-world use have shown glyphosate to be safe for human use.
In September 2017, the US Environmental Protection Agency concluded a decades-long assessment of glyphosate risks and found that the chemical was not a likely carcinogen to humans.
However, in 2015, the cancer unit of the World Health Organisation classified glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans."
