The 1st District Court of Appeal said there was evidence to support a California jury's 2018 decision that “Monsanto acted with a conscious disregard for public safety,” but it reduced the damages to Dewayne Johnson of Vallejo because state law doesn't allow damages for reduced life expectancy, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Jurors awarded Johnson $289.2 million but a judge later reduced the punitive damages, knocking down the total to $78.5 million. “This effectively rewards a defendant for killing a plaintiff, as opposed to just injuring him,” Wisner told the Chronicle. Johnson's case against Monsanto was the first in the United States to reach trial. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed by people alleging they got cancer from using Monsanto's weed killers.