(Photo: directaction.org.au)

The jury at the Superior Court of California  in San Francisco ruled that that Roundup, the most popular weed killer in the world, gave Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, terminal cancer. After an 8-week trial, the jury ordered Monsanto to pay Johnson 250 million USD in punitive damages and about 39 million USD in compensatory damages. Johnson said he had constantly used Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and Ranger Pro when he was working at a school in Benicia of California and later on found out he had cancer.  Roundup is Monsanto’s top glyphosate herbicide. Monsanto is one of the suppliers of weed-killers and Agent Orange/Dioxin used during the US war in Vietnam.

Dioxin is found out to be linked to cancer, Parkinson, birth defects, and dozens of other diseases. Thousands of American war veterans and millions of Vietnamese civilians were exposed to the herbicides used by the US army. Diseases related to plant-killing chemicals used during the US war in Vietnam cost billions of USD from the US Federal Government Budget. American war veterans and Vietnamese citizens have filed law suits against chemical companies which provided herbicides.

In 1984, in the first law suit, the companies, who claimed that they are entitled to immunity from liability in accordance with the Law on US Government Contract Defense, were ordered to pay 180 million USD to American war veterans. The courts said although the army was well aware of the dioxin’s destructiveness, it still used herbicides because the chemical companies help protect US troops.