Dover woman's lawsuit blames Roundup for cancer

CONCORD — A Dover woman has filed a federal product liability suit against the makers of Roundup, alleging her exposure to the glyphosate-based herbicide caused her cancer and other hardship.

Horne Street resident Ann Marie Hallisey’s civil suit is among 18,000 pending similar claims across the country filed against Roundup creator Monsanto and its parent company, German-based Bayer A.G.

Attorney D. Michael Noonan of Shaheen and Gordon PA filed Hallisey’s suit Friday in U.S. District Court in Concord. The seven-pronged suit accuses Monsanto of defective design, failure to warn, negligence, breach of express warrant, breach of implied warranties, negligent misrepresentation and/or fraud, and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

The suit claims Hallisey “regularly” used Roundup in and around New Hampshire from approximately 1985 to 1991, and again from approximately 1999 to 2012.

Noonan wrote on behalf of his client in the suit: “As a proximate result of Defendant’s wrongful acts and omission in placing its defective Roundup® products into the stream of commerce without adequate warnings of the hazardous and carcinogenic nature of glyphosate, Plaintiff developed B-Cell Follicular non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (around 2009) and later Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (around 2016) and suffered grave injuries that are permanent and lasting in nature, physical pain and mental anguish, including diminished enjoyment of life, as well as economic hardship, including considerable financial expenses for medical care and treatment.”

Three similar California cases have gone to trial over the last year, each alleging links between Roundup and consumers diagnosed with cancer.

Last August, a San Francisco jury awarded $289 million to former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson of Vallejo. A judge later reduced that award to $78.5 million. In March, a federal court jury awarded more than $80 million to Edwin Hardeman of Sonoma County. A judge reduced that award to $25.2 million. In May, an Oakland jury awarded Livermore couple Alva Pilliod and Alberta Pilliod a combined $2.055 billion. A judge later reduced that award to $87 million.

Trials in three other cases were recently postponed as the parties pursue settlement talks, including one that was postponed earlier this month in St. Louis, according to national news reports.

Monsanto developed glyphosate, Roundup’s primary active ingredient, in the 1970s. The weed killer is now sold in more than 160 countries and widely used in the U.S.

Glyphosate came under increasing scrutiny after the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015.

Bayer has denied the link between glyphosate and cancer. Company officials have said they would appeal the verdicts, writing in a statement that the claims, verdicts and damages “conflict with the extensive body of reliable science and conclusions of leading health regulators worldwide.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have also said they consider the weed killer safe. In April, EPA officials said glyphosate posed “no risks of concern” for people exposed to it by any means — on farms, in yards and along roadsides, or as residue left on food crops.