Kline & Specter Wins $2.25 Billion Roundup Cancer Verdict, Later Cut to $400 Million

For about two decades, John McKivison used Roundup to kill weeds. He sprayed the glyphosate-based weedkiller at a warehouse job in his 20s and later treated his own property in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, sometimes spreading 25 to 30 gallons at a time across land as large as two acres. In 2020, doctors diagnosed the former landscaper, then in his late 40s, with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the blood.

Kline & Specter took his case to trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, with Thomas R. Kline leading the plaintiff's team alongside co-counsel Jason Itkin of Arnold & Itkin. The central claim was failure to warn. The lawyers argued that Monsanto knew, or should have known, that glyphosate posed a cancer risk and sold Roundup for decades without telling users. Jurors heard that the company kept the product on shelves without a label tying it to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Monsanto denied that Roundup causes cancer and pointed to regulators, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that have not classified glyphosate as a human carcinogen. The plaintiff's side countered with the 2015 finding by the World Health Organization's cancer research arm that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans.

On January 26, 2024, the jury found Monsanto liable and returned a unanimous verdict of $2.25 billion. The award split into $250 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages. It was the largest Roundup verdict to that point, ahead of a $1.5 billion award a Missouri jury had returned two months earlier. Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, had by then set aside roughly $16 billion to resolve more than 100,000 Roundup claims.

The full amount did not stand. In June 2024, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Schulman cut the verdict to $400 million, a reduction of more than 80 percent. She set compensatory damages at $50 million and punitive damages at $350 million, ruling the original figure excessive. Both sides said they would appeal, with Monsanto challenging the liability finding and McKivison's lawyers contesting the reduction. As reduced, the judgment for McKivison stood at $400 million.