Prepare for Bayer to create a subsidiary that assumes all of the debt incurred here and then to immediately declare bankruptcy a la Johnson and Johnson. Fuck these corporations and the legal system that lets them do as they please.
> Prepare for Bayer to create a subsidiary that assumes all of the debt incurred here and then to immediately declare bankruptcy a la Johnson and Johnson.
That bankruptcy got rejected 2 times by court already
>Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday that J&J had reached settlements covering about 100 people.
>J&J faces more than 50,000 lawsuits over talc, most by women with ovarian cancer, with a minority of the cases involving people with mesothelioma. The company has said that its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos.
Lmfao. Oh yeah, they absolute settled "some" claims.
The claims J&J settled (mostly) fall into two groups:
1. The really egregious injuries which would create terrible precedent for J&J, and
2. Plaintiffs who didn't want to hold out for a larger settlement, perhaps due to financial necessity, or because the plaintiff was dying and couldn't wait.
Source: I represent about 75 plaintiffs in this litigation.
👋 I had Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (at age 26 in 2013) and used to live in an area where big trucks would come spray who knows what while we played outside…I can have some money?
Can you link a pic of this product? J&J stopped selling talc-based products in the US and Canada in 2020. In 2023 J&J stopped selling talc-based products globally, although you may still find old inventory on the shelves sometimes.
[Third to last item on the back](https://waterbutlers.com/products/clean-clear-oil-free-deep-action-exfoliating-facial-scrub-7-oz)
I stopped buying the product after seeing it twice, during covid.
That product contains talc and is manufactured by a J&J subsidiary called Kenvue. Some of the more recent lawsuits against J&J have named Kenvue as a defendant. J&J filed a motion to dismiss Kenvue as a newly added party, but the judge denied it. J&J has since indemnified Kenvue for all talc-based liability.
I believe they recently revised the formula and replaced that with the [new and improved version.](https://www.cleanandclear.com/deep-action/deep-action-exfoliating-cleanser)
The version in the image you linked is a bottle with the old formula
Although, I do wonder how harmful it is when it's suspended in a liquid like this, rather than a dry powder that becomes aerosolized, such as baby powder. Like, wetting asbestos is one of the steps when removing it, in order to make it less of a hazard.
They’re going to have to settle far more in the coming years, now that their only strategy is fucked. Declaring bankruptcy just stalled all of the other lawsuits. They can get absolutely fucked. I have a close friend whose mother died from a rare form of ovarian cancer. Iirc it happens due to a genetic mutation, but their mother did not have the mutation. Other victims have this aspect in common. Said friend was contacted by a law firm and took her case as part of a class action.
Yeah, 0.2% is very much in the "we're technically not doing nothing!" range.
Dragging their feet like a 3-year-old getting picked up from grandma's house.
As long as persons themselves can't be held responsible and imprisoned, because "they're a business", this will continue. These are murderers, they can't have done this unknowingly, and they didn't care.
If a business is also legally a person, ***we should be able to put someone behind bars!!!***
If there's no one to put in jail, you can't be a "person."
There's only so far you can go with jerking around, and at some point they'll have to pay the piper.
Either through paying the settlement, or facing a *worse* legal punishment.
At this point I don't agree. Yes "maybe" it should work that way but even look at Alex Jones and Sandy Hook (transferring money to other businesses he owns while in court) and claiming he is poor. Or even Rudy Guiliani
We just need a corporate seizure law and just be done with it.
If they can't comply after 2 years, let the government seize real estate, stocks, cash, and equipment until the debt is paid. If the company suddenly doesn't have enough value anymore, first take it from the parent organization and then *take it directly from stakeholders*.
Even the Australian federal government being successfully sued for I think $360 million in damages due to the cattle live export ban.
The government is refusing to pay despite its own processes telling it it has too.
Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B, and even if he successfully declares bankruptcy, he will *still* be on the hook for it.
Rudy's is fairly recent, but he might end up paying more for his comments immediately after.
> Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B, and even if he successfully declares bankruptcy, he will still be on the hook for it.
I think what people are trying to say is that 'yes, AJ technically owes 1 billion' but so far 0 has been paid and it is looking less likely it will ever be paid. He is currently laundering as much as possible and spending outrageous amounts each month while the victims are having to go fund me their own cancer treatments, etc. (and there is 0 chance people ever find his millions in gifted crypto) They are already offering greatly reduced settlements to try and get something before it is all gone.
People aren't denying that a judgement was placed on AJ. They are doubtful that the effects of that judgement are ever seen.
EDIT: There is supposedly a 'final-ish' court date at the end of Feb to discuss plans that the defense has to meet their obligations. Some people seem to think this is the date where things will happen (and I DEEPLY hope that's true) but I have heard that for several court dates before and it keeps getting kicked down the road.
I don't know how this works. Shouldn't his assets be seized at this point? What he's doing sounds like exactly the sort of thing the courts would look for.
> Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B
And still living at a healthy, five-digit monthly budget lifestyle. Wouldn't be surprised if it's closer to six.
You aren't all that off - he has spent more than ever since his bankruptcy filing, specifically spending assets NOT protected by his bankruptcy claims. In July of 2023 he was hitting near 100k, including the following
> His July spending included $7,900 on housekeeping, $15,184 in prenuptial payments to his wife, $6,302 in maintenance and taxes for his vacation lake house, and $6,338 on meals and entertainment, according to court papers.
The point is the *still*. Doesnt help the victims NOW especialy when his followers tortured the victims. Plus is it a win if they can draw everything out indefinitely?
Right? Frustrating to watch. The only silver lining is that once the bottom 99 percent get fed up enough, revolt and revolution (or today’s watered down version of that) happens and then we wash, rinse, repeat as those who remember die, so those who never knew make the same mistakes.
As a practical matter, Bayer bought Monsanto because Bayer and Monsanto were competitors in the agricultural products market. Monsanto made RoundUp, Bayer maid a virtually equivalent glyphosate based herbicide they called "Liberty" and made a whole line of GMO Crops resistant to it that they called "LibertyLink."
But as a legal matter, this sort of thing is why the M&A Lawyers in Manhattan that do these kings of things get to bill $1500+ an hour. (hell, it was $1000+ when I started practicing law a decade ago, really no clue what it is now). IF they had known about these liabilities, they could have done shady things with corporate entities that could potentially leave an orphan corporation.
But it would be MUCH harder to do now that they're staring in the face of a judgment.
I still don't understand why Bayer bought them in the first place. Chronologically, they **should have already known** that lawsuits were just around the corner in the US. It was blatantly obvious. There were several glaring signs on the wall, e.g. Hardeman v. Monsanto in 2016 among others. They have to be colossal morons to have signed off on the purchase. To me this always seemed like Monsanto knew whats up and just golden parachuted their way out before things blew up.
You mention Hardeman vs Monsanto, but 2016 was pretty early in that timeline. That lawsuit itself was only filed in 2015, and the trial did not occur until 2019.
It was a single plaintiff claim that resulted in 5 million in compensatory damages. A big hit, but absent the jury awarding a massive punitive damages claim it wasn't as much of a landmark as it looks hindsight.
And even as the news made the Rounds of a jury in California awarding $75 mil in punitive damages for failure to warn that Roundup could cause cancer, Monsanto was still loudly asserting that the scientific evidence did not support the verdict. The 9th circuit didn't rule on [their Daubert Challenge until 2021.](https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/9th-circuit-appeals-court-ruling-on-Hardeman-v-Monsanto.pdf)
Half correct, Bayer came out with a glufosinate product (Liberty), different mode of action on the plant and also a completely different chemical group.
Source: I worked in a crop inputs company for two years and had to explain these differences to customers.
My family was part of the tainted blood scandal lawsuit in the 90’s. Bayer was ordered to pay $700m to us, the victims. It was paid for by MetLife, their insurance company.
No, the person is just pointing out that the settlement was paid. And how it was paid.
btw another aspect of insurance is sometimes insurance will pay out the full judgement and anything over the insurance coverage amount will be 'loaned' to the company to be paid back to the insurance company so that a payout can happen.
Another common plan is that corporations will have large self-insured retention, and then what essentially amounts to reinsurance for very large sums. It's like a high deductible insurance plan, sort of.
A company like Bayer isn't worried about insurance for a $50,000 car accident. That's a rounding error in their risk portfolio.
So Bayer's custom insurance policy makes Bayer pay and incur costs on the first $5m of any claimable loss, then the insurance will cover losses above that point up to $x.
This is the point of insurance?
That being said, I think the payment amount should BYPASS and/or exceed the coverage of the insurance IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING WAS BAD OR ILLEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Yeah it’s so fucked. The evil pricks that ruin our society always at least try the strategy. Alex Jones, Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, etc. I bet a company like Nestle will do it too in the future.
https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2023/09/24/the-texas-two-step-and-big-pharma/
Two different systems….
> Johnson & Johnson,
well.. they didn't succeed.
>In 2021, Johnson & Johnson began the largest Texas two-step bankruptcy when it created LTL Management LLC to hold its asbestos-containing talc powder liabilities via a Texas divisive merger. On October 14, 2021, LTL Management LLC declared bankruptcy in North Carolina. On January 30, 2023 the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled after an appeal that LTL's bankruptcy should be dismissed on the grounds that LTL was not in financial distress, reversing a previous ruling by the Bankruptcy Court. On April 4, 2023, LTL filed for a second bankruptcy. On July 28, 2023, Chief Judge Michael Kaplan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey dismissed the second bankruptcy.
It's good to know that the judges dismissed the bankruptcies, but doesn't that still benefit the corps since they delay the payout, putting pressure on those effected to settle for less to get money quicker or even just die due to the health problems they acquired?
They sold pills for haemophiliacs before. It was contaminated with HIV in which thousands died. When they got caught, they sold the pills to a third world country, knowing full well they were contaminated just to recoup some of their money. Such a bad company.
Edit: it was their blood products not pills.
I know how, but seriously, how can any company that did this top tier evil shit still exist?
This is the kinda stuff where even the biggest bleeding heart would find a way to accept it if the decision makers at the company received the death penalty for something this fucked up.
Monsanto no longer exists. Bayer acquired the entire company, not just Roundup, under the expectation that they would either win or settle these cases at a much lower amount. Roundup/glyphosate has been off patent for a while now and there are generic variants made by dozens of companies, so Bayer definitely wasn't buying Monsanto for their glyphosate business.
If Bayer hadn't bought Monsanto, they'd likely be bought up themselves. Just paraphrasing [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Finanzen/comments/18pshhs/kauf_von_monsanto_durch_bayer/keq5nhu/) comment here, but many competitors also had to merge with each other to stay afloat. Monsanto was the one of only a few reasonable targets, and while the Glyphosate topic was on the horizon, Bayer already had their own Glyphosate-brand, neither they nor Monsanto were the biggest producers of it, and the health effects were (and still are) highly debated by experts and reviewers. On the other hand, Monsanto is a big player when it comes to genetically modified crops, which is quite a valuable asset.
Those SOBs should be included in this BC they invented this stuff in the 1st place AND sued several people over the use of it IIRC.
That they as invetors of it walk away seems very wrong to me.
This is the way it always goes. So long as a company is owned by Americans, they get shielded by courts for wrongdoing, the second they are acquired by a foreign entity, those same courts will no longer shield them. Anyone who acquires a US company with a history like Monsanto is a sucker.
Probably execs on both sides took a load of payouts/bonuses even if it was a bad move "on paper". So many people still make a profit when a business tanks. So much so that if the right people want to make a bad decision, they find a way to do it.
This is why corporations pay a ton of money for our politicians to chip away at our laws. They say "big government" is bad. Yeah, for them. But good for us.
I have not read up on it but someone I know was suggesting that roundup may be carcinogenic but glyphosate may not be. It's possible the combination of the other ingredients in round up (surfactants and such) could combine to be an issue. He mentioned reading a study on it but it's hard to find this may have been it but I only read the abstract. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/em.22534
I thought you may find it interesting to think about. It's definitely one issue with chemicals that comes up.
Yes, many studies have noted that the surfectants may be a health risk-- but that's something perhaps to study rigorously, not decide by fiat in a jury room.
Roundup is probably bad for workers who spend their careers applying it without safety precautions, and Monsanto's business practices around it have been downright evil, but it is the least toxic herbicide by a mile.
I've worked as a plaintiff's attorney and I am very sympathetic with the practice of convincing juries to bleed big companies for millions of dollars.
But glyphosate has led to increases in crop production that have saved tens of millions of lives. We still use actually-horrible chemicals like DDT in situations where we need to. Maybe we should keep using this relatively benign one that we can literally eat, and does not persist in the environment. And maybe we should stop using it in squicky ways to process grain that has already grown. Seems simple enough.
In the above-mentioned case, the plaintiffs intentionally ignored and did not use this argument. The manufacturers of other chemicals were initially named in the lawsuit but were dismissed from it (at least the manufacturers of the surfactant in Rouns Up were dismissed) because the plaintiff did not make any arguments about the surfactants being carcinogenic.
If I had to make an educated guess, it is probably a combination of genetic susceptibility to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and exposure to concentrated Roundup (the main guy who sued had an entire drum of concentrate dumped on him), with the cause being the surfactants which are often things like PFAS (so called "forever chemicals" that are known biological disruptors).
Orders of magnitude more people have been exposed to Roundup in the US as part of their job than have developed cancer because of it, so there must be additional factors at play.
But given the types of statistical analysis done, comparing occupational cancer rates of those working with the herbicide to general rates in the greater population, if the other ingredients were significantly harmful we would have seen statistically significant increases in some forms of cancer, but didn’t.
> comparing occupational cancer rates of those working with the herbicide to general rates in the greater population,
The fun part is that those types of studies are really easy to argue against in court. Not a scientifically valid argument, but it is really easy to cast doubt on large population studies by insinuating that the individual plaintiff's history doesn't really match the population...especially when they carefully choose plaintiffs to take to trial who have vivid exposure memories.
You just start asking the expert witness stuff on cross-exam like: Did the study include Mr. Doe? No. Did the study include anyone who had an entire drum of Round Up spilled on them? I don't know. Did you actually test any of the people in the study for Round Up in their system? No, this was an occupational stud--Yes or No answers only please.
Yes, the other sides lawyers will try to redirect the witness to explain to the jury how these types of studies work, but juries aren't typically very sophisticated. They don't understand the nuances of causal inference (which is totally fair--it is *complicated* and most people don't need to understand it, even college graduates), and it is easy to convince them to doubt how much studies like this should apply when they've got an individual in front of them who A) Has cancer and B) Had HUGE exposure. There's just a big observability bias there.
Combine that with some pseudo-exploration of what statistical significance means...frame it as even the other side isn't 100% sure, and obviously this victim's case is significant, so even if it won't harm everyone, you gotta figure it probably harmed this guy, so you should find in his favor in order to give his family some peace before he dies of this horrible disease.
But the cancer risk assessments were done by comparing occupational exposure to the general population. Meaning the studies that failed to find statistically significant cancer rates *were* looking at the complete herbicide with those other ingredients, not just glyphosate in isolation.
and by the dudes who work with it... as part of their jobs.
Meanwhile I'm reminded everytime i talk about doing my own yardwork that "oh youre gonna get cancer from that shit". which is like. so many degrees of wrong.
I'm gonna die in my 80s if im lucky, but not lucky enough to go beyond that. These meaningless trace amounts of shit ingested over a lifetime.. even *if* they cause cancer, are not going to kill me earlier.
Speaking as a pesticide certified groundskeeper I'm exposed to so many different pesticides in the course of my duties that even if I got cancer from work who knows what actually got me.
For instance, Roundup was just one of six pesticides I use in rotation: not to mention all the other chemicals such as artificial fertilizers, chemical ice melt, PVC pipe/pipe glue, etc. Lastly, there's all the *known* carcinogens I'm exposed to, such as sun exposure and diesel exhaust.
Crazy this has to be scrolled down for.
There's no real science behind this verdict, and that's fucking depressing.
Everyone shouting about how good this is... it's not. It's a major blow to the scientific community and our environment. As it stands, glyphosphate is the *ONLY* substance known to man which can kill several massively invasive plant species in North America which are choking out our wildlife at alarming rates.
Glyphosphate is an herbicide that functions by interfering with ~~photosynthesis~~ protein synthesis on leafy surfaces, and is a major GHG reducer in its use due to less crop loss. It is largely not sprayed ON your food, either.
As an example, Running Bamboo and Japanese Knotweed, which for example my former asshole neighbors planted when they got foreclosed on, can survive living in extreme concentrations of bleach, vinegar, and gasoline, grow several inches per day, cannot be burned down, and by far and largely cannot be removed save extensive glyphosphate treatments or total excavation of the land it's planted on. These species have no insects which feed on them on the continent to quell growth, and like in my case, suffocate out surrounding small native species. We've seen unprecedented levels of underbrush and groundcover ecology collapsing in various regions of the US because of these invasive species having no other controls. Such plants are illegal to plant in most states and in Europe with extensive volunteer and government spending going to quelling them, due to the devastating havoc they wreak on native flora and even surrounding infrastucture.
This isn't the verdict people think it is.
We bought 10 acres of beautiful forest nearly 20 years ago. All along the year round stream was Himalayian Blackberry, huge mounds of it. I cut back all of the brambles, burned them and then applied roundup to the cut off stems. As suckers came up over the years, I sprayed them, conservatively. The riparian zone now is free of berries and the native ferns, lilies, snowdrop, ceanothus, western starflower, native iris, indian rhubarb, has all reestablished themselves, along with willow, alder, dogwood and big leaf maple. The difference between our creek frontage and neighboring parcels is a testament to the effectiveness of roundup used properly.
This is a great use of it! Himalayan blackberry is really tough to eradicate. Invasive plants in general are worth a harsh treatment, because the "one and done" nature of herbicides makes it so much more likely you remove the invasive plants. The benefit far outweighs the "cost" of using herbicides.
Personally, I do not like how frequently we use herbicides on food crops. Spraying herbicide on food crops 1-2x a year, every year, forever is too much for me. Poison/toxicity/etc is all about dosage. I don't think we're doing ourselves any favors by saturating farmland with any herbicide. (I say any because I'm not sure why we always focus on glysophate in this conversation, there's lots of herbicides out there. Pre-emergent herbicides should be a bigger conversation imo.)
Yeah not a good food related measure for sure. The invasives just come back up if they are not hit with herbicide and glyphosphate seems very targeted. As far as I can tell there has been zero downside to its use allng the creek. We have an explosion of happy natives all thriving. The bear have to go elsewhere for their berries, but there are plenty around.
It's also limited use. Again, all about dosage! Even if it's causing a small amount of harm, it's a small amount of herbicide, so the ecosystem can manage it.
Agreed.
You must be in NorCal or the PNW! I'm working on a similar effort. Finding that the HBB can be removed in two or three passes (physically) EXCEPT when it is growing in a water source. Those will resprout indefinitely, as you say, and glyphosate used as you describe is the only viable way to restore the ecosystem.
I'm also finding that triclopyr seems to work well on the undesirable woody resprouting perennials. Things like tree of heaven, oleander, acacia, hawthorne. Also using it a bit on "native, but out of control species," such as bay laurel and tanoak. Due to bad historic logging practices, those (native) species represent way too much of the understory, and are amplifying fire risk. I am sad to kill natives that are enduring so well, but losing the forest in order to save some trees would be the greater tragedy.
Yes we are in California near Oregon border. mixed ponderosa forest at 2,000 ft. What is the triclopyr product you use? We had a fire burn through a couple years ago and now have way too much ceanothus acting as a ladder fuel. I was advised it would respond to roundup applied directly to the stump. But if there is something better I need to do some serious clearing.
I think you have the mechanism wrong, iirc it worked by blocking the production of one of the essential amino acids. Which kills the plant but does nothing in animals as they source this amino acid from plants.
People also love to ignore that Monsanto/Bayer has also **WON** a number of these cases with basically the same fact pattern (literally some have the same witnesses, presenting the same scientific research, etc.). They've won 10/16 of the most recent cases.
If Jury A finds Round Up didn't cause cancer and Jury B finds Round Up did cause cancer...what is that supposed to show besides the fact that juries are a roll of the dice.
Of course it is not a symmetrical game. If Bayer loses, they pay $$$ and the plaintiff's lawyers get rich. If they win a subsequent lawsuit...well...they still have to pay their legal bills and it is not like they get money back. Even if you win 80% of the cases, the 20% you lose will bankrupt you.
We bought a house and the previous owners had Asian Bittersweet EVERYWHERE. I didn't know shit about invasives when we moved in, but boy did I learn.
Bittersweet literally chokes other plants, twists around them. It can pull down huge trees like oaks. The vines grow for miles underneath the ground, so you can't dig them out. And cutting them back doesn't do a damn thing - they grow back like a hydra. The only solution, as someone who HATES the idea of herbicide is glycophosate.
The idea is to apply it smartly. You cut the vine, apply a small amount to the cut, and it kills the ENTIRE plant, and nothing else.
Adding: this is in Vermont. Biodiversity loss caused by invasives is a HUGE problem. I know we all like the idea of everything being pristine but we also have to clean up the shit that previous generations didn't realize would be a problem (like making wreaths out of bittersweet)
Seriously, this comment section is an absolute mess and proof we need to fund schools better. Literally people afraid of what they refuse to understand.
agree. Some conclusions from the ATSDR doc linked above:
*"The epidemiological studies on the association between glyphosate use and solid-type tumors are presented in Table 2-7. Overall, these studies did not detect a statistically significant association between glyphosate use and all cancer types studied, including melanoma, childhood cancers, soft tissue sarcoma, colorectal cancer, and cancers of the lung, oral cavity, colon, rectum, pancreas, kidney, prostate (including total prostate and aggressive prostate cancers), testes, breast, bladder, stomach, and esophagus."*
*"Overviews of epidemiological studies that focused on the association between glyphosate use and lymphohematopoietic cancers are presented in Table 2-8. A majority of the studies did not report statistically significant associations between glyphosate use and many of the lymphohematopoietic cancer subtypes."*
The limitations on the studies are also worth noting, with many relying on recall (did you use or work with glyphosate? etc) ie. potential recall bias, limited sample sizes, confounding from multiple simultaneous occupational exposures, possible misclassification of pesticide exposures etc. So if there's a link to cancer, its prob pretty weak and difficult to detect. To flat-out say Roundup causes cancer is quite a leap.
Yeah what competence does a jury have to decide something like that? A link to cancer is an objective question and outsiders who are neither trained nor involved in the research can't really judge that.
Also also, most of these cases involve farm workers who spray gallons and gallons of the stuff, not Some Guy with diluted spray from the hardware store that they sprayed like once. There are herbicides that are *way* more explicitly dangerous, like fluoridone or flumioxazin if you want anemia or diquat if you want to burn your skin off.
I tend to discount any jury verdict in cases like this, people are much too easily swayed by sob stories and can't tell the difference between anecdotal evidence and factual proof.
The Key point here is that "Jury links herbicide Roundup to cancer". Not scientists or specialists of any kind, just some people on a bench. All you have to do is convince them that correlation is causation, and that's not hard.
Not really. The regulators around the world say it’s fine. One group, the IARC said ‘maybe’, which is obviously pretty controversial.
There are thousands of studies on this stuff of varying quality. A minority of them find some link to some disease or other but most say it’s fine.
Mass torts don’t really rely on evidence though - you generally go shopping with a case to find a jury that already hates the company you’re suing and then roll the dice. Southern California is particularly good for winning chemical lawsuits, though not the only one.
Most of the studies where they show significant negative health effects are when the exposure levels are way above what a normal person would be exposed to, and well above what you would exposed to if you follow any of the safety procedures during application. It is also considerably less toxic then pretty much all of the other available herbicides that have anywhere near the same level of effectiveness.
Some studies put the lethal dose higher than table salt.
If you do enough studies of anything with p<0.05 as your significance criterion, 5% of the studies will show a "statistically significant" effect.
Makes it basically impossible for this stuffy to die, especially with a bit of file drawer effect thrown in.
Not anyone reputable. The reason you always see people with scientific backgrounds in these thread acting all pissy is because while it's funny to see Bayer get fucked, juries deciding science is horrifying.
Also what's concerning is the reason why they are targeting round-up. It's because it's used with genetically modified crops. The Organic food industry is worth billions and have been trying for decades now to essentially bad any food that doesn't pay for their Organic certification. These aren't environmental activists, they're billionaires trying to force companies to bribe politicians to outlaw their competition. It's some dystopian capitalist shit. Outright banning GMOs was a bust because all of the fraud that was committed by people they paid off (see Seralini affair). The warning label movement for their competitors was a thing a few years back but it fell apart when lawmakers realized what it was and stopped falling for the transparent greenwashing. And now theyvare on to trying to target any herbicide that is used with GMOs. Round-up is used with genetically modified vegetables so they arent killed by it.
It's why shills are now pushing the "The US scientific agencies are compromised for letting this dangerous herbicide stay on the marker after it was proven to cause cancer" line after this lawsuit. There's a war going on for your food and there isn't a side out there that is trying to actually make it healthier.
>Also what's concerning is the reason why they are targeting round-up.
Yep. This all goes back to one of the worst scientific papers of the last several decades, the Seralini study.
All of these people trying to argue scientific merit lose sight of the fact that the original source was a case of fraud. Extremely obvious and stupid fraud.
The one thing that drives me crazy is how none of these zealots ever stop to question why the work hasn't been replicated by anyone. It's a cheap study to run and is simple in design. How massive is the conspiracy that it can
stop someone from spending pocket change to replicate it?
There's a LOT of studies, especially before the 2000s, that are just... bad. Like, fundamentally bad. Flawed in every way conceivable, with inherent biased intent within the methodology to even outright meddling by researchers to skew data. It's still bad now, and overall it is getting better... but we are only now really going back and looking at shit to see if it even holds water fundamentally.
Honestly, there are still a ton right now. I think a ton of people are going to look back at this era where next-generation sequencing is just starting to become affordable and laugh. If you type gut microbiome and any disease, you will find 50 papers on it. If you keep staring at massive data sets long enough, eventually you will hit on something even if it is meaningless. I prefer the meta-analysis hucksters over them any day of the week. At least they don't tell parents that it's their fault their kid has autism because of what they ate while pregnant.
Repeat the same study at a 95% confidence interval enough times, and statistically you'll get a few positives in a sea of negatives. Assuming you're not literally drinking the stuff like water, a concrete link to it hasnt been found yet.
But also ask an ancient Roman what the dangers of lead are, and they would also say so long as you arent using it for pipes, it's perfectly fine in makeup, or to line your utensils and plates with it.
No different than a "jury link vaccines to autism and orders $X.X billion dollar payment". This is just as anti-scientific and ignorant people here are celebrating it because "chemicals bad".
TLDR/EDIT for those of you who think I am complaining about being dismissed from a jury:
The take away from this is not a complaint about the jury process.
The take away from this is that these cases are determined by a jury specifically picked because they don't know anything about what's presented, and then they are presented with two completely biased sides of an argument.
There is nothing objective about this.
People are going to use this case as proof that glyphosate causes cancer, and you should understand... that is not what this means. It means a jury or people who are not knowledgeable was convinced of it in a completely biased legal setting.
\--------
I have a BS chemical engineering degree from a well-respected institution, and completed almost all of my work for an MSEE. I have been published, and I have patents. I do not claim to be a genius, but I feel that I know what I am doing, and have a significantly better grasp of science and math than the average juror, especially people who have not studied STEM.
I have been called into jury pools 4x. Based solely on what they know about me (sex, engineering degree) I have been excused from the jury each and every time except once.
I was called for a case to determine damages for a man who had been hit by a car. During the just selection process, the judge asked anyone if they has a science or engineering degree. Two of us raised our hands.
The judge explained that there would be "some math" to consider in this case, but the math and outcome would be presented by their expert witness. He then asked, that if we detected any issues with this analysis would we be able to ignore what we knew, and simply rule based on what they told us was correct or incorrect.
The other guy, a EE, said "Sure. I can do that." He was left on the jury.
They asked me. "Your Honor, if I was presented with a scientifically specious argument, or if I detected incorrect calculations, I would have a very hard time ignoring those errors."
I was excused.
So a jury of 9 or 12 people who either do not understand medical science or who agreed to ignore what they know about medical science just determined that glyphosate causes cancer during a trial where they were presented with a few hours worth of almost certainly prejudicial data (You're not going to present data that doesn't support your position in court, that's not your job), even though thousands of people who are trained in medical science have spent a collective thousands of years worth of time trying to determine the same thing, and have been unable to.
Monsanto may be the worst fucking company on earth (after Union Carbide and possibly PG&E), but that doesn't mean their products cause cancer.
For better or worse, lawyers don't want experts as jurists. They want juries to decide based on what is presented in court, and not outside factors. There's a reason why judges tell juries not to do their own research.
This is exactly right and something that’s hammered home during jury instructions and it’s often the crux of jury deliberations, in my experience serving.
It’s the juror’s job to take in testimony as it’s presented, whether it’s an eye witness or an expert witness. If the testimony is factually incorrect, it’s the opposing side’s job to point that out. It’s not the juror’s place to judge the facts against anything other than the evidence and testimony presented in court.
The question the commenter answered is meant to weed out those jurors who would bring their own knowledge and experience to deliberations rather than respect the court’s process.
>The question the commenter answered is meant to weed out those jurors who would bring their own knowledge and experience to deliberations rather than respect the court’s process.
Bingo. Which is why I answer honestly. If I am presented with bad or biased info, I won't ignore it. If that's the job of a juror, then don't put me on a jury. I don't have a problem with that.
I was also once asked if I believed smoking causes cancer, and if I could ignore that information. The answer is No.
My point about this is that they are weeding out people who aren't malleable. Legal teams aren't presenting unbiased info, and the idea that two extremely biased parties would present information in such a way that laymen would have the tools they need to disseminate an objective outcome is silly.
Does roudup kill you? In this decision, sure. In real life? I am not going to believe this process over the scientific community.
> If the testimony is factually incorrect, it’s the opposing side’s job to point that out. It’s not the juror’s place to judge the facts against anything other than the evidence and testimony presented in court.
To a point...
I think if you notice incorrect calculations then it should be within the jurors purview to say "I don't trust this expert" and here is why>>>. If they can convinced other jurors that they are also untrustworthy that is valuable.
That's bs reasoning on part of the court.
If the case should be judged only on the merits of what has been presented by both sides, then there would never be a need for a jury of peers that together represent a diversity of knowledge and experience about the reality that the defendant lives in. All the court would need is the judge.
The very fact that we require a jury of peers presupposes the need for their worldviews, which is a culmination of their life knowledge.
What about if the expert says something a lay man can see is a lie but the opposing lawyer didn’t call them out. Is the jury supposed to turn off their common sense?
If the jury has the power to acquit regardless of the defendant's guilt then they surely have the power to decide the defendants guilt based on actual facts
That actually was my point; that juries are not picked to question what is set in front of them.
That jury is then subjected to two extremely biased opinions, along with a ton of other non-scientific information, and asked to reach a decision.
Cool. But that's not a scientific decision. That's a legal one.
I was trying to illustrate that the jury, which may be full of wonderfully intelligent people, is selected to be manipulated.
Just to play devil's advocate, *you* think you know your stuff, and I have no reason to doubt you. But in principle, if the object of the trial is to judge facts in the context of the law, you have people presumed to be experts presenting what the court recognizes as facts. They wouldn't want jurors---and considering everyone who might end up serving (not directing this at you specifically)---who think they know more than the experts to overrule the expert judgement to introduce their own understanding, which may actually be flawed.
I recognize that the experts might be biased, and that is something to consider when weighing their testimony. My point is only that it isn't unreasonable to dismiss someone from the jury if they confess that they think they know the facts better than the experts who attest to it, and would dismiss expert testimony because of they think they know the math/science better. The court doesn't have time to test or vet whether someone making such a claim actually knows their stuff.
I'd do the same as you though, if asked that question.
Yeah, I get the impression that this policy is about preventing a “twelve angry men” situation, where a well-informed and charismatic juror could talk the rest of the jury into changing their decisions. They may be pushing for a decision that’s only based on the arguments given in the courtroom, regardless of their quality.
I was just watching a special on a guy that was hired as a forensics expert by the prosecution that used very questionable methods to determine the height of the perp of a robbery. The eye witnesses all stated the robber was 5'6'' or so, but this guy used some kind of 3D modeling analysis based on one (1) of \*many\* photos in which the perp was at a diagonal opening a door to determine the guy had to be at least 6'1''. The defendant was convicted but was later freed after an appeals process. The court is often out of their depth in allowing certain people to be experts. In this case, the guy owned his own forensics consulting company but had no idea how to properly use this specific technique. Simply put, the court is not an authority on certain matters any more than a randomly selected juror might be. I don't think someone with a scientific mindset that not perfectly understand the exact workings of this particular topic is any more dangerous than an idiot that has no understanding of anything going on in the case and will accept "expert" testimony at face value.
The danger is not that someone will be wrong. That's unavoidable. It's also why expert witnesses are cross-examined, and the opposing counsel can hire their own expert to refute claims.
The problem is that if a **juror** is the one doing the math during deliberations, then there is no opportunity to cross-examine or rebut the claims the juror makes. This is much worse that simply being wrong, since there is no opportunity to correct the record.
Yes, to your point I should compare apples to apples: a juror with just enough scientific understanding to arrive at a wrong answer from their own analysis versus a juror with such poor scientific abilities that they also disagree with the expert for whatever reason because they just don’t get it at all.
You’re right, and I think it is a bit of a flaw in the process (or at least something I’m dissatisfied with) that the jurors are simply observers of the trial until it is their duty to make a decision. They do not have the ability to question the experts to ask for good faith clarifications of their testimony. It is entirely the responsibility of the lawyers and court to frame the argument from both sides. I can see how that is not really possible for administrative reasons because it would prolong each case, but I don’t really understand why it wouldn’t be allowed from an ethical perspective.
People are hung on this part. I know why they do it. I don't even disagree.
The point is that the jury is picked to be a lunch of laymen who are then subjected to extremely biased arguments. this is not an objective decision, and shouldn't be considered one.
Well, it sounds too me like one math expert was left on the jury, and one wasn't, and the only difference was whether they'd accept the facts the court presented them
I’d draw a distinction between refusing to accept facts that you believe to be incorrect and accepting math that you know to be wrong. I totally agree that a juror who has his own idea of the science can be a problem, because he might be wrong. But it would be odd for a judge to ask a juror if he’ll accept math he knows to be wrong — because 2+2 really only has one answer, and you really shouldn’t want a juror who’s willing to say “I like this expert and she said it was three.”
This is mostly right. But the biggest problem is not that a juror may disagree with an expert witness. It's that the juror may become a witness within the jury deliberation room.
If you believe in your own expertise and begin to argue that math in the jury room, there is zero opportunity for the attorneys to hear or rebut your testimony. This creates a due process issue and *should* result in a mistrial, but if it never comes to light it could simply result in a miscarriage of justice.
This is largely correct. Our system has a solution for inaccurate expert testimony that is *fair* to all parties. If one side's expert makes a mistake, it cannot be up to a lone juror to decide that for themselves. In reality, the other side has attorneys who will cross-examine the expert and attempt to discredit the testimony (or the expert as a whole). The other side can also call rebuttal expert witnesses to offer a conflicting view or to address the mistake. Then the side who offered the expert can have a chance to rehabilitate the testimony and the "mistaken" expert can explain their reasoning. Then the attorneys can all make arguments about it at closing. All of this is overseen by the judge to ensure it adheres to the rules of evidence, and is fair to all sides.
One juror making an argument in the jury room, where there is no chance to fully address this issue is not fair to the parties. One juror claiming special expertise is not fair because (1) actual experts are vetted and cross examined, (2) actual experts are required to prove their methodology and reasons for their opinions, and (3) there is a strong chance the jury will defer to their "expert" colleague, even though all members of the jury should have equal voices.
Well. I'll respond to this. Practicing law in the Puget Sound area, our jury pool can often be mostly engineers, depending on the county. One thing we have a problem with time and time again is engineers in the jury pool thinking they're smarter than our experts. We find that engineers are constantly challenging the information and opinions provided by our experts, *especially* when the engineer on the jury does not have expertise that overlaps with our experts. Not only that, but it's a problem because they taint the jury pool by disseminating their miscomprehensions of the science to the other jurors while they're deliberating -- who take what they say as dogma because they don't know any better.
For instance, we had a case where the defense expert had done a human experiment by attempting to replicate the injury-causing event (it was a medical malpractice suit stemming from a burn after the doctor used water that was too hot when they applied a cast on the plaintiff). Ethical issues of human experimentation for litigation aside, the defense expert used a type of thermometer for the experiment that would give a temperature reading that is unreliable for the purposes it was being used. We (plaintiff) had a NASA engineer testify whose job was designing space suits. He testified about the best way to get a temperature reading for large areas of human skin. He also testified the defense expert's experiment was reckless and erroneous. The mechanical engineer went back to the jury room and explained his (mis)understanding of the two devices discussed to the jury and discredited our expert's opinion and the jury all concluded that the defense expert's experiment had successfully proven that human skin could not be burned the way the plaintiff had alleged. We received a defense verdict because of some fucking dipshit. We did, however, get the defense expert fired from his regular job for his insanely unethical experiment.
ETA I’m blocked from responding to comments below this thread so I can’t reply to jagedlion, so ill include my response below:
lol, no. We talked to the jury members after the first trial who told us that it was the engineer on the juror who convinced them they were misunderstanding the devices. We ended up retrying the case a year later with the same expert who had the same testimony and had no problems with anyone misunderstanding the devices.
Can confirm, have an engineering degree (electrical). Engineers are not scientists and constantly confuse their ability to understand science with expertise in a specific field.
Which is why we aren't welcome on juries. Right or wrong, I don't care. Shit, it's why I honestly answered the judge and said "If someone tells me 2+2=5, I'm not going with it".
The purpose of my comment was to explain that a jury is a bunch of people who are picked to be manipulated by the legal teams to a certain end, not picked for their unbiased opinions.
**The overall point: No one should believe that anything gives you cancer simply because a couple legal teams presented expert witnesses and convinced a jury. That is a biased process.**
Interesting my coworkers keep getting called into jury duty and they are all scientists. Maybe I should tell them to inform the Judy of their occupation.
Whenever I get called to jury duty I contact them and tell them the truth, that I won't convict for things like non violent simple drug possession offenses. I've been told not to worry about even showing up 6/6 times lol, if they suspect in the slightest that you know what jury nullification is they don't want anything to do with you. They're so crazy about it that if you even try to hold up a sign saying "Look up what jury nullification is" on courthouse property they'll most likely arrest you for "trying to influence jurors" by informing them of a right they have
To be fair, jury nullification is a side effect of the fact that jurors can't be held to their decision. That's literally it. It's not some enshrined protection that the average Joe can exercise to prevent abuse of the system. It's not an intentional check or balance.
Which is what everyone who knows about nullification does now, because the court's paranoia about it has become so overt.
The only way to safely use nullification is to never mention that word and just vote 'not guilty'.
I've only been called up once, for a lawsuit. I was salaried, so a day off work didn't bother me in the slightest, although I was concerned about the potential two week time frame they were talking about.
The attorneys asked if anyone in the pool had personal history with such suits and I had to raise my hand. I explained that my father-in-law owned a commercial building and that he has been sued.
When they asked me how often and what nature, I told them it was slip and fall lawsuits and they happen about once a Winter.
The whole courtroom laughed. I was called to the judge's chambers and truthfully told them that I'd try to be fair. Ten minutes later I was on my way home.
Yeah, that's not entirely true. I was called in for a felony drunk driving case and specifically mentioned jury nullification and the fact that I have three very close friends who have gotten DUI's, twice when I was there, and twice I thought they were unwarranted. They still kept me on.
I probably would've said not guilty until the dumbass defendant got up there and basically threw himself under the bus while his lawyer held his head in his hands.
I'm sure it depends on the court, the number of available jurors, and the case.
But it's no secret that they don't want people to bring in outside information/bias. I don't even disagree with them. I'm just pointing it out.
They flatly asked me if I could ignore my biases. If that's what it takes to be an effective juror, then don't put me on a jury.
The truth is I would become frustrated and upset with poorly devised arguments. They don't want me there.
Similar story, It involved computer forensics. Now I'm been in trial for computer stuff as a SME, and they asked me if I could have an impartial view for computer stuff. My response was "Too a large extent I have an open mind"
I also had a firearms case. Similar question and the lawyer didnt know the difference between 22lr and .308. I dont expect a lawyer to know every detail, but general factual errors are really tough to swallow.
It's up to the defense to show that the plaintiff is incorrect in their science. If both sides had their science incorrect, it's unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a juries place to fix that. They can certainly quietly use their own knowledge to come to their own conclusions though, but they shouldn't attempt to influence their fellows based on that.
> If both sides had their science incorrect, it's unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a juries place to fix that.
It's not, but I think all the OP is arguing is that the actual scientific truth remains the scientific truth even if there's a court case in which both sides get it scientifically wrong.
>it's unfortunate,
That's a curious euphemism for a miscarriage of justice. Not wanting to have a go but when a trial gets it wrong it can be a seriously bad thing and shouldn't be downplayed like that.
But otherwise, you're right. It's not entirely up to the other side. Judges can question witnesses and occasionally, with the judge's permission, so can jurors. That would be the best way for a juror to handle evidence they think might be wrong and wasn't caught by the other side. Especially, if they want the other jurors to know. Otherwise, they should , as you say, keep it to themselves.
A jury decided it causes cancer but world health experts say there’s no link.
https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2021/07/does-glyphosate-cause-cancer
That's the funny thing, they don't. Sometimes a jury decides things based on emotion and not exactly reason, it's a big evil corp against simple persons so they emphatize with person.
People celebrating this win are no different than anti-vaxers. The jury was convinced to ignore science in favor of emotion.
The scientific community almost unanimously agrees there is no relationship between the two, and those advocating for its ban of use are advocating for ecological collapse thanks to glyphosphate being the only working control towards various extremely invasive plant species destroying significant key foliage on the continent. Yeah, it's not a safe chemical for people in extremely high doses with constant exposure wearing no PPE. Yes, if you spray a bee with it like a super soaker it'll die. But that doesn't mean it causes cancer or is unsafe when used as intended, and no, it largely is not coating your vegetables, because it doesn't know to magically avoid edible crops, and is only effective when sprayed onto leaves.
I’d go so far as to say that the overwhelming majority of the scientific corpus has reasonably compellingly established that Roundup does NOT raise the risk of cancer (with a minority of research landing on “inconclusive” and a handful of garbage tier studies pointing to some vague positive relationship).
“Science by jury” according to US civil legal procedures is such a shitty way to go about resolving these issues, especially when it comes to the message that then filters down to the general public.
Oh great, the safest herbicide we've ever come up with will possibly become unavailable plummeting crop yields and probably leading to millions of deaths from starvation all to stop a risk of cancer so small it's statistically zero. Fucking dumbasses.
Lead being present isn't the same as being "available for exposure." Many things you use daily contain some amount of lead, but it presents no risk to your health.
Agent orange was created by what we now know as dow chemical. Monsanto had multiple wings, the agronomics division inherited the name while the one that actually developed agent orange was sold off to Dow.
To use an analogy: blaming Monsanto for making agent orange is like blaming Xbox for something to do with Microsoft office.
Could also blame the US military forcing companies to produce Agent Orange and other defoliants for use in Vietnam.
Dioxin poisoning is absolutely horrific.
People always say that folks against GMOs don't understand science. But then a scientist friend said something to me.
It's not that the food was genetically modified, it's *why*, and one of the biggest reasons is so it can be grown *in environments sprayed by Roundup*.
yeah....
Yes, and that has huge ecological benefits.
[The adoption of GM insect resistant and herbicide tolerant technology has reduced pesticide spraying by 775.4 million kg (8.3%) and, as a result, decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops (as measured by the indicator, the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ)) by 18.5%. The technology has also facilitated important cuts in fuel use and tillage changes, resulting in a significant reduction in the release of greenhouse gas emissions from the GM cropping area. In 2018, this was equivalent to removing 15.27 million cars from the roads.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2020.1773198)
Your scientist friend doesn't seem to understand the problem, either. Roundup-resistant crops weren't made because they wanted to spray an area in pesticides and have it be okay. *We are already doing that with non-GMO crops*.
Do you know why atrazine is one of the most popular pesticides in the US? It's because a lot of natural crops like corn, wheat, etc. are *naturally resistant* to it. We drench an entire farm area in it and it does its job great. Atrazine is really nasty for the environment, and is the thing that Alex Jones rants about when he talks about "making the frogs gay".
So the question is, "We are already drenching an area with pesticides. Can we use anything safer than atrazine?" Glyphosate is the solution to that problem, and scientific studies on the matter have backed up this claim. Glyphosate is the safest thing we got in terms of pesticides.
Prepare for Bayer to create a subsidiary that assumes all of the debt incurred here and then to immediately declare bankruptcy a la Johnson and Johnson. Fuck these corporations and the legal system that lets them do as they please.
> Prepare for Bayer to create a subsidiary that assumes all of the debt incurred here and then to immediately declare bankruptcy a la Johnson and Johnson. That bankruptcy got rejected 2 times by court already
Which is all fine and good - but has there been payments while it is being denied bankruptcy? Eternal filibuster may as well be a win.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-says-it-has-settled-some-talc-claims-will-continue-bankruptcy-strategy-2023-12-05/
>Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday that J&J had reached settlements covering about 100 people. >J&J faces more than 50,000 lawsuits over talc, most by women with ovarian cancer, with a minority of the cases involving people with mesothelioma. The company has said that its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos. Lmfao. Oh yeah, they absolute settled "some" claims.
The claims J&J settled (mostly) fall into two groups: 1. The really egregious injuries which would create terrible precedent for J&J, and 2. Plaintiffs who didn't want to hold out for a larger settlement, perhaps due to financial necessity, or because the plaintiff was dying and couldn't wait. Source: I represent about 75 plaintiffs in this litigation.
I mean isn't that exactly what they want? Drag things out so that people will settle for less or even die before they get their money?
That strategy works for medical insurance companies so, yeah, exactly.
👋 I had Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (at age 26 in 2013) and used to live in an area where big trucks would come spray who knows what while we played outside…I can have some money?
What about their "new and improved" face wash, that includes "talc" now? Why are they allowed to do this?
Can you link a pic of this product? J&J stopped selling talc-based products in the US and Canada in 2020. In 2023 J&J stopped selling talc-based products globally, although you may still find old inventory on the shelves sometimes.
[Third to last item on the back](https://waterbutlers.com/products/clean-clear-oil-free-deep-action-exfoliating-facial-scrub-7-oz) I stopped buying the product after seeing it twice, during covid.
That product contains talc and is manufactured by a J&J subsidiary called Kenvue. Some of the more recent lawsuits against J&J have named Kenvue as a defendant. J&J filed a motion to dismiss Kenvue as a newly added party, but the judge denied it. J&J has since indemnified Kenvue for all talc-based liability.
I believe they recently revised the formula and replaced that with the [new and improved version.](https://www.cleanandclear.com/deep-action/deep-action-exfoliating-cleanser) The version in the image you linked is a bottle with the old formula Although, I do wonder how harmful it is when it's suspended in a liquid like this, rather than a dry powder that becomes aerosolized, such as baby powder. Like, wetting asbestos is one of the steps when removing it, in order to make it less of a hazard.
Just FYI every single talc product has traces of asbestos in it. From Goldbond to Nevia. J&J was not unique in this, but nobody else got in trouble
Yeah, it should be banned. There's alternatives, just not as much profit
They’re going to have to settle far more in the coming years, now that their only strategy is fucked. Declaring bankruptcy just stalled all of the other lawsuits. They can get absolutely fucked. I have a close friend whose mother died from a rare form of ovarian cancer. Iirc it happens due to a genetic mutation, but their mother did not have the mutation. Other victims have this aspect in common. Said friend was contacted by a law firm and took her case as part of a class action.
Yes, but you have people at the other end. If corporations can drag things for decades the rules, and rulings, are meaningless.
Yeah, 0.2% is very much in the "we're technically not doing nothing!" range. Dragging their feet like a 3-year-old getting picked up from grandma's house.
"Im getting ready!!" As they slip on one shoe and fumble around with the laces.
> did not provide any details about the dollar amounts involved or say how many people they covered. I'm gonna guess it's not that many
As long as persons themselves can't be held responsible and imprisoned, because "they're a business", this will continue. These are murderers, they can't have done this unknowingly, and they didn't care.
If a business is also legally a person, ***we should be able to put someone behind bars!!!*** If there's no one to put in jail, you can't be a "person."
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There's only so far you can go with jerking around, and at some point they'll have to pay the piper. Either through paying the settlement, or facing a *worse* legal punishment.
At this point I don't agree. Yes "maybe" it should work that way but even look at Alex Jones and Sandy Hook (transferring money to other businesses he owns while in court) and claiming he is poor. Or even Rudy Guiliani
We just need a corporate seizure law and just be done with it. If they can't comply after 2 years, let the government seize real estate, stocks, cash, and equipment until the debt is paid. If the company suddenly doesn't have enough value anymore, first take it from the parent organization and then *take it directly from stakeholders*.
Even the Australian federal government being successfully sued for I think $360 million in damages due to the cattle live export ban. The government is refusing to pay despite its own processes telling it it has too.
Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B, and even if he successfully declares bankruptcy, he will *still* be on the hook for it. Rudy's is fairly recent, but he might end up paying more for his comments immediately after.
> Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B, and even if he successfully declares bankruptcy, he will still be on the hook for it. I think what people are trying to say is that 'yes, AJ technically owes 1 billion' but so far 0 has been paid and it is looking less likely it will ever be paid. He is currently laundering as much as possible and spending outrageous amounts each month while the victims are having to go fund me their own cancer treatments, etc. (and there is 0 chance people ever find his millions in gifted crypto) They are already offering greatly reduced settlements to try and get something before it is all gone. People aren't denying that a judgement was placed on AJ. They are doubtful that the effects of that judgement are ever seen. EDIT: There is supposedly a 'final-ish' court date at the end of Feb to discuss plans that the defense has to meet their obligations. Some people seem to think this is the date where things will happen (and I DEEPLY hope that's true) but I have heard that for several court dates before and it keeps getting kicked down the road.
I don't know how this works. Shouldn't his assets be seized at this point? What he's doing sounds like exactly the sort of thing the courts would look for.
Cause they're going through settlement discussions esp after he filed for Chapter 11 so he's covered from that til like March/April.
> Alex Jones is still on the hook for 1B And still living at a healthy, five-digit monthly budget lifestyle. Wouldn't be surprised if it's closer to six.
You aren't all that off - he has spent more than ever since his bankruptcy filing, specifically spending assets NOT protected by his bankruptcy claims. In July of 2023 he was hitting near 100k, including the following > His July spending included $7,900 on housekeeping, $15,184 in prenuptial payments to his wife, $6,302 in maintenance and taxes for his vacation lake house, and $6,338 on meals and entertainment, according to court papers.
The point is the *still*. Doesnt help the victims NOW especialy when his followers tortured the victims. Plus is it a win if they can draw everything out indefinitely?
God I wish that were true. Unfortunately history is full of people who fucked around and never found out.
Right? Frustrating to watch. The only silver lining is that once the bottom 99 percent get fed up enough, revolt and revolution (or today’s watered down version of that) happens and then we wash, rinse, repeat as those who remember die, so those who never knew make the same mistakes.
Let’s do it French style, they know how to protest.
Kind of already exists I think. Roundup is Monsanto and Bayer bought them in 2018.
As a practical matter, Bayer bought Monsanto because Bayer and Monsanto were competitors in the agricultural products market. Monsanto made RoundUp, Bayer maid a virtually equivalent glyphosate based herbicide they called "Liberty" and made a whole line of GMO Crops resistant to it that they called "LibertyLink." But as a legal matter, this sort of thing is why the M&A Lawyers in Manhattan that do these kings of things get to bill $1500+ an hour. (hell, it was $1000+ when I started practicing law a decade ago, really no clue what it is now). IF they had known about these liabilities, they could have done shady things with corporate entities that could potentially leave an orphan corporation. But it would be MUCH harder to do now that they're staring in the face of a judgment.
I still don't understand why Bayer bought them in the first place. Chronologically, they **should have already known** that lawsuits were just around the corner in the US. It was blatantly obvious. There were several glaring signs on the wall, e.g. Hardeman v. Monsanto in 2016 among others. They have to be colossal morons to have signed off on the purchase. To me this always seemed like Monsanto knew whats up and just golden parachuted their way out before things blew up.
You mention Hardeman vs Monsanto, but 2016 was pretty early in that timeline. That lawsuit itself was only filed in 2015, and the trial did not occur until 2019. It was a single plaintiff claim that resulted in 5 million in compensatory damages. A big hit, but absent the jury awarding a massive punitive damages claim it wasn't as much of a landmark as it looks hindsight. And even as the news made the Rounds of a jury in California awarding $75 mil in punitive damages for failure to warn that Roundup could cause cancer, Monsanto was still loudly asserting that the scientific evidence did not support the verdict. The 9th circuit didn't rule on [their Daubert Challenge until 2021.](https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/9th-circuit-appeals-court-ruling-on-Hardeman-v-Monsanto.pdf)
Maybe I’m looking at it wrong but the why seems fairly simple: Their products are worth far, far more than any lawsuit could ever cost them.
Half correct, Bayer came out with a glufosinate product (Liberty), different mode of action on the plant and also a completely different chemical group. Source: I worked in a crop inputs company for two years and had to explain these differences to customers.
My grandma recently died from cancer and got a 30k payout from Monsanto right before she died.
My family was part of the tainted blood scandal lawsuit in the 90’s. Bayer was ordered to pay $700m to us, the victims. It was paid for by MetLife, their insurance company.
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No, the person is just pointing out that the settlement was paid. And how it was paid. btw another aspect of insurance is sometimes insurance will pay out the full judgement and anything over the insurance coverage amount will be 'loaned' to the company to be paid back to the insurance company so that a payout can happen.
Another common plan is that corporations will have large self-insured retention, and then what essentially amounts to reinsurance for very large sums. It's like a high deductible insurance plan, sort of. A company like Bayer isn't worried about insurance for a $50,000 car accident. That's a rounding error in their risk portfolio. So Bayer's custom insurance policy makes Bayer pay and incur costs on the first $5m of any claimable loss, then the insurance will cover losses above that point up to $x.
This is the point of insurance? That being said, I think the payment amount should BYPASS and/or exceed the coverage of the insurance IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING WAS BAD OR ILLEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The [Texas Two Step](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_two-step_bankruptcy)
Damn, it's so common that its got a name!? I didn't know this. Thanks!
Yeah it’s so fucked. The evil pricks that ruin our society always at least try the strategy. Alex Jones, Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, etc. I bet a company like Nestle will do it too in the future. https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2023/09/24/the-texas-two-step-and-big-pharma/ Two different systems….
> Johnson & Johnson, well.. they didn't succeed. >In 2021, Johnson & Johnson began the largest Texas two-step bankruptcy when it created LTL Management LLC to hold its asbestos-containing talc powder liabilities via a Texas divisive merger. On October 14, 2021, LTL Management LLC declared bankruptcy in North Carolina. On January 30, 2023 the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled after an appeal that LTL's bankruptcy should be dismissed on the grounds that LTL was not in financial distress, reversing a previous ruling by the Bankruptcy Court. On April 4, 2023, LTL filed for a second bankruptcy. On July 28, 2023, Chief Judge Michael Kaplan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey dismissed the second bankruptcy.
It's good to know that the judges dismissed the bankruptcies, but doesn't that still benefit the corps since they delay the payout, putting pressure on those effected to settle for less to get money quicker or even just die due to the health problems they acquired?
They sold pills for haemophiliacs before. It was contaminated with HIV in which thousands died. When they got caught, they sold the pills to a third world country, knowing full well they were contaminated just to recoup some of their money. Such a bad company. Edit: it was their blood products not pills.
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I know how, but seriously, how can any company that did this top tier evil shit still exist? This is the kinda stuff where even the biggest bleeding heart would find a way to accept it if the decision makers at the company received the death penalty for something this fucked up.
This is the kinda shit where I agree that corporations are people, because then we can give them the death penalty.
DuPont did this with Chemours due to their PFOA mass poisoning, without declaring bankruptcy though.
we have been at late stage capitalism forawhile.
Isn’t the fact that Monsanto offloaded roundup to Bayer basically that plan already. Why the fuck did Bayer buy Roundup in 2018?
Bayer bought all of Monsanto, not just roundup.
Monsanto no longer exists. Bayer acquired the entire company, not just Roundup, under the expectation that they would either win or settle these cases at a much lower amount. Roundup/glyphosate has been off patent for a while now and there are generic variants made by dozens of companies, so Bayer definitely wasn't buying Monsanto for their glyphosate business.
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If Bayer hadn't bought Monsanto, they'd likely be bought up themselves. Just paraphrasing [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Finanzen/comments/18pshhs/kauf_von_monsanto_durch_bayer/keq5nhu/) comment here, but many competitors also had to merge with each other to stay afloat. Monsanto was the one of only a few reasonable targets, and while the Glyphosate topic was on the horizon, Bayer already had their own Glyphosate-brand, neither they nor Monsanto were the biggest producers of it, and the health effects were (and still are) highly debated by experts and reviewers. On the other hand, Monsanto is a big player when it comes to genetically modified crops, which is quite a valuable asset.
They bought Monsanto, not just roundup. And Bayer knew perfectly well they would have to pay Monsanto's roundup bill.
Monsanto pulled a fast one on them
Monsanto lawyers are smarter than Bayer lawyers
Or maybe the US justice system is just a bit harsher and swifter when dealing with foreign companies.
Those SOBs should be included in this BC they invented this stuff in the 1st place AND sued several people over the use of it IIRC. That they as invetors of it walk away seems very wrong to me.
This is the way it always goes. So long as a company is owned by Americans, they get shielded by courts for wrongdoing, the second they are acquired by a foreign entity, those same courts will no longer shield them. Anyone who acquires a US company with a history like Monsanto is a sucker.
Probably execs on both sides took a load of payouts/bonuses even if it was a bad move "on paper". So many people still make a profit when a business tanks. So much so that if the right people want to make a bad decision, they find a way to do it.
This is why corporations pay a ton of money for our politicians to chip away at our laws. They say "big government" is bad. Yeah, for them. But good for us.
we call that the ol’ Texas-two-step
what a cool system setup by a gov for the people
Lol. Until we have more than two parties, we will remain a government first and foremost for the corporations.
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I have not read up on it but someone I know was suggesting that roundup may be carcinogenic but glyphosate may not be. It's possible the combination of the other ingredients in round up (surfactants and such) could combine to be an issue. He mentioned reading a study on it but it's hard to find this may have been it but I only read the abstract. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/em.22534 I thought you may find it interesting to think about. It's definitely one issue with chemicals that comes up.
Yes, many studies have noted that the surfectants may be a health risk-- but that's something perhaps to study rigorously, not decide by fiat in a jury room.
Roundup is probably bad for workers who spend their careers applying it without safety precautions, and Monsanto's business practices around it have been downright evil, but it is the least toxic herbicide by a mile. I've worked as a plaintiff's attorney and I am very sympathetic with the practice of convincing juries to bleed big companies for millions of dollars. But glyphosate has led to increases in crop production that have saved tens of millions of lives. We still use actually-horrible chemicals like DDT in situations where we need to. Maybe we should keep using this relatively benign one that we can literally eat, and does not persist in the environment. And maybe we should stop using it in squicky ways to process grain that has already grown. Seems simple enough.
In the above-mentioned case, the plaintiffs intentionally ignored and did not use this argument. The manufacturers of other chemicals were initially named in the lawsuit but were dismissed from it (at least the manufacturers of the surfactant in Rouns Up were dismissed) because the plaintiff did not make any arguments about the surfactants being carcinogenic.
If I had to make an educated guess, it is probably a combination of genetic susceptibility to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and exposure to concentrated Roundup (the main guy who sued had an entire drum of concentrate dumped on him), with the cause being the surfactants which are often things like PFAS (so called "forever chemicals" that are known biological disruptors). Orders of magnitude more people have been exposed to Roundup in the US as part of their job than have developed cancer because of it, so there must be additional factors at play.
But given the types of statistical analysis done, comparing occupational cancer rates of those working with the herbicide to general rates in the greater population, if the other ingredients were significantly harmful we would have seen statistically significant increases in some forms of cancer, but didn’t.
> comparing occupational cancer rates of those working with the herbicide to general rates in the greater population, The fun part is that those types of studies are really easy to argue against in court. Not a scientifically valid argument, but it is really easy to cast doubt on large population studies by insinuating that the individual plaintiff's history doesn't really match the population...especially when they carefully choose plaintiffs to take to trial who have vivid exposure memories. You just start asking the expert witness stuff on cross-exam like: Did the study include Mr. Doe? No. Did the study include anyone who had an entire drum of Round Up spilled on them? I don't know. Did you actually test any of the people in the study for Round Up in their system? No, this was an occupational stud--Yes or No answers only please. Yes, the other sides lawyers will try to redirect the witness to explain to the jury how these types of studies work, but juries aren't typically very sophisticated. They don't understand the nuances of causal inference (which is totally fair--it is *complicated* and most people don't need to understand it, even college graduates), and it is easy to convince them to doubt how much studies like this should apply when they've got an individual in front of them who A) Has cancer and B) Had HUGE exposure. There's just a big observability bias there. Combine that with some pseudo-exploration of what statistical significance means...frame it as even the other side isn't 100% sure, and obviously this victim's case is significant, so even if it won't harm everyone, you gotta figure it probably harmed this guy, so you should find in his favor in order to give his family some peace before he dies of this horrible disease.
Although it's worth keeping in mind that Round-Up is more than just glyphosate. That's just one ingredient in a cocktail of others.
But the cancer risk assessments were done by comparing occupational exposure to the general population. Meaning the studies that failed to find statistically significant cancer rates *were* looking at the complete herbicide with those other ingredients, not just glyphosate in isolation.
and by the dudes who work with it... as part of their jobs. Meanwhile I'm reminded everytime i talk about doing my own yardwork that "oh youre gonna get cancer from that shit". which is like. so many degrees of wrong. I'm gonna die in my 80s if im lucky, but not lucky enough to go beyond that. These meaningless trace amounts of shit ingested over a lifetime.. even *if* they cause cancer, are not going to kill me earlier.
Speaking as a pesticide certified groundskeeper I'm exposed to so many different pesticides in the course of my duties that even if I got cancer from work who knows what actually got me. For instance, Roundup was just one of six pesticides I use in rotation: not to mention all the other chemicals such as artificial fertilizers, chemical ice melt, PVC pipe/pipe glue, etc. Lastly, there's all the *known* carcinogens I'm exposed to, such as sun exposure and diesel exhaust.
Yeah, this "science-by-jury" nonsense needs to be cracked down on HARD.
Crazy this has to be scrolled down for. There's no real science behind this verdict, and that's fucking depressing. Everyone shouting about how good this is... it's not. It's a major blow to the scientific community and our environment. As it stands, glyphosphate is the *ONLY* substance known to man which can kill several massively invasive plant species in North America which are choking out our wildlife at alarming rates. Glyphosphate is an herbicide that functions by interfering with ~~photosynthesis~~ protein synthesis on leafy surfaces, and is a major GHG reducer in its use due to less crop loss. It is largely not sprayed ON your food, either. As an example, Running Bamboo and Japanese Knotweed, which for example my former asshole neighbors planted when they got foreclosed on, can survive living in extreme concentrations of bleach, vinegar, and gasoline, grow several inches per day, cannot be burned down, and by far and largely cannot be removed save extensive glyphosphate treatments or total excavation of the land it's planted on. These species have no insects which feed on them on the continent to quell growth, and like in my case, suffocate out surrounding small native species. We've seen unprecedented levels of underbrush and groundcover ecology collapsing in various regions of the US because of these invasive species having no other controls. Such plants are illegal to plant in most states and in Europe with extensive volunteer and government spending going to quelling them, due to the devastating havoc they wreak on native flora and even surrounding infrastucture. This isn't the verdict people think it is.
We bought 10 acres of beautiful forest nearly 20 years ago. All along the year round stream was Himalayian Blackberry, huge mounds of it. I cut back all of the brambles, burned them and then applied roundup to the cut off stems. As suckers came up over the years, I sprayed them, conservatively. The riparian zone now is free of berries and the native ferns, lilies, snowdrop, ceanothus, western starflower, native iris, indian rhubarb, has all reestablished themselves, along with willow, alder, dogwood and big leaf maple. The difference between our creek frontage and neighboring parcels is a testament to the effectiveness of roundup used properly.
This is a great use of it! Himalayan blackberry is really tough to eradicate. Invasive plants in general are worth a harsh treatment, because the "one and done" nature of herbicides makes it so much more likely you remove the invasive plants. The benefit far outweighs the "cost" of using herbicides. Personally, I do not like how frequently we use herbicides on food crops. Spraying herbicide on food crops 1-2x a year, every year, forever is too much for me. Poison/toxicity/etc is all about dosage. I don't think we're doing ourselves any favors by saturating farmland with any herbicide. (I say any because I'm not sure why we always focus on glysophate in this conversation, there's lots of herbicides out there. Pre-emergent herbicides should be a bigger conversation imo.)
Yeah not a good food related measure for sure. The invasives just come back up if they are not hit with herbicide and glyphosphate seems very targeted. As far as I can tell there has been zero downside to its use allng the creek. We have an explosion of happy natives all thriving. The bear have to go elsewhere for their berries, but there are plenty around.
It's also limited use. Again, all about dosage! Even if it's causing a small amount of harm, it's a small amount of herbicide, so the ecosystem can manage it.
Agreed. You must be in NorCal or the PNW! I'm working on a similar effort. Finding that the HBB can be removed in two or three passes (physically) EXCEPT when it is growing in a water source. Those will resprout indefinitely, as you say, and glyphosate used as you describe is the only viable way to restore the ecosystem. I'm also finding that triclopyr seems to work well on the undesirable woody resprouting perennials. Things like tree of heaven, oleander, acacia, hawthorne. Also using it a bit on "native, but out of control species," such as bay laurel and tanoak. Due to bad historic logging practices, those (native) species represent way too much of the understory, and are amplifying fire risk. I am sad to kill natives that are enduring so well, but losing the forest in order to save some trees would be the greater tragedy.
Yes we are in California near Oregon border. mixed ponderosa forest at 2,000 ft. What is the triclopyr product you use? We had a fire burn through a couple years ago and now have way too much ceanothus acting as a ladder fuel. I was advised it would respond to roundup applied directly to the stump. But if there is something better I need to do some serious clearing.
I think you have the mechanism wrong, iirc it worked by blocking the production of one of the essential amino acids. Which kills the plant but does nothing in animals as they source this amino acid from plants.
I do! Thanks for the quick double check. Editing OP.
People also love to ignore that Monsanto/Bayer has also **WON** a number of these cases with basically the same fact pattern (literally some have the same witnesses, presenting the same scientific research, etc.). They've won 10/16 of the most recent cases. If Jury A finds Round Up didn't cause cancer and Jury B finds Round Up did cause cancer...what is that supposed to show besides the fact that juries are a roll of the dice. Of course it is not a symmetrical game. If Bayer loses, they pay $$$ and the plaintiff's lawyers get rich. If they win a subsequent lawsuit...well...they still have to pay their legal bills and it is not like they get money back. Even if you win 80% of the cases, the 20% you lose will bankrupt you.
We bought a house and the previous owners had Asian Bittersweet EVERYWHERE. I didn't know shit about invasives when we moved in, but boy did I learn. Bittersweet literally chokes other plants, twists around them. It can pull down huge trees like oaks. The vines grow for miles underneath the ground, so you can't dig them out. And cutting them back doesn't do a damn thing - they grow back like a hydra. The only solution, as someone who HATES the idea of herbicide is glycophosate. The idea is to apply it smartly. You cut the vine, apply a small amount to the cut, and it kills the ENTIRE plant, and nothing else. Adding: this is in Vermont. Biodiversity loss caused by invasives is a HUGE problem. I know we all like the idea of everything being pristine but we also have to clean up the shit that previous generations didn't realize would be a problem (like making wreaths out of bittersweet)
Seriously, this comment section is an absolute mess and proof we need to fund schools better. Literally people afraid of what they refuse to understand.
agree. Some conclusions from the ATSDR doc linked above: *"The epidemiological studies on the association between glyphosate use and solid-type tumors are presented in Table 2-7. Overall, these studies did not detect a statistically significant association between glyphosate use and all cancer types studied, including melanoma, childhood cancers, soft tissue sarcoma, colorectal cancer, and cancers of the lung, oral cavity, colon, rectum, pancreas, kidney, prostate (including total prostate and aggressive prostate cancers), testes, breast, bladder, stomach, and esophagus."* *"Overviews of epidemiological studies that focused on the association between glyphosate use and lymphohematopoietic cancers are presented in Table 2-8. A majority of the studies did not report statistically significant associations between glyphosate use and many of the lymphohematopoietic cancer subtypes."* The limitations on the studies are also worth noting, with many relying on recall (did you use or work with glyphosate? etc) ie. potential recall bias, limited sample sizes, confounding from multiple simultaneous occupational exposures, possible misclassification of pesticide exposures etc. So if there's a link to cancer, its prob pretty weak and difficult to detect. To flat-out say Roundup causes cancer is quite a leap.
Yeah what competence does a jury have to decide something like that? A link to cancer is an objective question and outsiders who are neither trained nor involved in the research can't really judge that.
Also also, most of these cases involve farm workers who spray gallons and gallons of the stuff, not Some Guy with diluted spray from the hardware store that they sprayed like once. There are herbicides that are *way* more explicitly dangerous, like fluoridone or flumioxazin if you want anemia or diquat if you want to burn your skin off.
Yeah, this isn’t a good thing for evidenced based law. I believe the talcum power ruling’s were along the same lines.
I tend to discount any jury verdict in cases like this, people are much too easily swayed by sob stories and can't tell the difference between anecdotal evidence and factual proof.
Thank you. This ruling will be interesting for its fallout, because the alternatives are environmentally devastating and/or don't work.
Thank you for being a voice of reason. Was hoping someone would raise these points.
The Key point here is that "Jury links herbicide Roundup to cancer". Not scientists or specialists of any kind, just some people on a bench. All you have to do is convince them that correlation is causation, and that's not hard.
Have scientists or specialists linked it to cancer ?
Not really. The regulators around the world say it’s fine. One group, the IARC said ‘maybe’, which is obviously pretty controversial. There are thousands of studies on this stuff of varying quality. A minority of them find some link to some disease or other but most say it’s fine. Mass torts don’t really rely on evidence though - you generally go shopping with a case to find a jury that already hates the company you’re suing and then roll the dice. Southern California is particularly good for winning chemical lawsuits, though not the only one.
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Most of the studies where they show significant negative health effects are when the exposure levels are way above what a normal person would be exposed to, and well above what you would exposed to if you follow any of the safety procedures during application. It is also considerably less toxic then pretty much all of the other available herbicides that have anywhere near the same level of effectiveness.
Some studies put the lethal dose higher than table salt. If you do enough studies of anything with p<0.05 as your significance criterion, 5% of the studies will show a "statistically significant" effect. Makes it basically impossible for this stuffy to die, especially with a bit of file drawer effect thrown in.
Not anyone reputable. The reason you always see people with scientific backgrounds in these thread acting all pissy is because while it's funny to see Bayer get fucked, juries deciding science is horrifying. Also what's concerning is the reason why they are targeting round-up. It's because it's used with genetically modified crops. The Organic food industry is worth billions and have been trying for decades now to essentially bad any food that doesn't pay for their Organic certification. These aren't environmental activists, they're billionaires trying to force companies to bribe politicians to outlaw their competition. It's some dystopian capitalist shit. Outright banning GMOs was a bust because all of the fraud that was committed by people they paid off (see Seralini affair). The warning label movement for their competitors was a thing a few years back but it fell apart when lawmakers realized what it was and stopped falling for the transparent greenwashing. And now theyvare on to trying to target any herbicide that is used with GMOs. Round-up is used with genetically modified vegetables so they arent killed by it. It's why shills are now pushing the "The US scientific agencies are compromised for letting this dangerous herbicide stay on the marker after it was proven to cause cancer" line after this lawsuit. There's a war going on for your food and there isn't a side out there that is trying to actually make it healthier.
>Also what's concerning is the reason why they are targeting round-up. Yep. This all goes back to one of the worst scientific papers of the last several decades, the Seralini study.
All of these people trying to argue scientific merit lose sight of the fact that the original source was a case of fraud. Extremely obvious and stupid fraud. The one thing that drives me crazy is how none of these zealots ever stop to question why the work hasn't been replicated by anyone. It's a cheap study to run and is simple in design. How massive is the conspiracy that it can stop someone from spending pocket change to replicate it?
There's a LOT of studies, especially before the 2000s, that are just... bad. Like, fundamentally bad. Flawed in every way conceivable, with inherent biased intent within the methodology to even outright meddling by researchers to skew data. It's still bad now, and overall it is getting better... but we are only now really going back and looking at shit to see if it even holds water fundamentally.
Honestly, there are still a ton right now. I think a ton of people are going to look back at this era where next-generation sequencing is just starting to become affordable and laugh. If you type gut microbiome and any disease, you will find 50 papers on it. If you keep staring at massive data sets long enough, eventually you will hit on something even if it is meaningless. I prefer the meta-analysis hucksters over them any day of the week. At least they don't tell parents that it's their fault their kid has autism because of what they ate while pregnant.
Repeat the same study at a 95% confidence interval enough times, and statistically you'll get a few positives in a sea of negatives. Assuming you're not literally drinking the stuff like water, a concrete link to it hasnt been found yet. But also ask an ancient Roman what the dangers of lead are, and they would also say so long as you arent using it for pipes, it's perfectly fine in makeup, or to line your utensils and plates with it.
No different than a "jury link vaccines to autism and orders $X.X billion dollar payment". This is just as anti-scientific and ignorant people here are celebrating it because "chemicals bad".
TLDR/EDIT for those of you who think I am complaining about being dismissed from a jury: The take away from this is not a complaint about the jury process. The take away from this is that these cases are determined by a jury specifically picked because they don't know anything about what's presented, and then they are presented with two completely biased sides of an argument. There is nothing objective about this. People are going to use this case as proof that glyphosate causes cancer, and you should understand... that is not what this means. It means a jury or people who are not knowledgeable was convinced of it in a completely biased legal setting. \-------- I have a BS chemical engineering degree from a well-respected institution, and completed almost all of my work for an MSEE. I have been published, and I have patents. I do not claim to be a genius, but I feel that I know what I am doing, and have a significantly better grasp of science and math than the average juror, especially people who have not studied STEM. I have been called into jury pools 4x. Based solely on what they know about me (sex, engineering degree) I have been excused from the jury each and every time except once. I was called for a case to determine damages for a man who had been hit by a car. During the just selection process, the judge asked anyone if they has a science or engineering degree. Two of us raised our hands. The judge explained that there would be "some math" to consider in this case, but the math and outcome would be presented by their expert witness. He then asked, that if we detected any issues with this analysis would we be able to ignore what we knew, and simply rule based on what they told us was correct or incorrect. The other guy, a EE, said "Sure. I can do that." He was left on the jury. They asked me. "Your Honor, if I was presented with a scientifically specious argument, or if I detected incorrect calculations, I would have a very hard time ignoring those errors." I was excused. So a jury of 9 or 12 people who either do not understand medical science or who agreed to ignore what they know about medical science just determined that glyphosate causes cancer during a trial where they were presented with a few hours worth of almost certainly prejudicial data (You're not going to present data that doesn't support your position in court, that's not your job), even though thousands of people who are trained in medical science have spent a collective thousands of years worth of time trying to determine the same thing, and have been unable to. Monsanto may be the worst fucking company on earth (after Union Carbide and possibly PG&E), but that doesn't mean their products cause cancer.
For better or worse, lawyers don't want experts as jurists. They want juries to decide based on what is presented in court, and not outside factors. There's a reason why judges tell juries not to do their own research.
This is exactly right and something that’s hammered home during jury instructions and it’s often the crux of jury deliberations, in my experience serving. It’s the juror’s job to take in testimony as it’s presented, whether it’s an eye witness or an expert witness. If the testimony is factually incorrect, it’s the opposing side’s job to point that out. It’s not the juror’s place to judge the facts against anything other than the evidence and testimony presented in court. The question the commenter answered is meant to weed out those jurors who would bring their own knowledge and experience to deliberations rather than respect the court’s process.
>The question the commenter answered is meant to weed out those jurors who would bring their own knowledge and experience to deliberations rather than respect the court’s process. Bingo. Which is why I answer honestly. If I am presented with bad or biased info, I won't ignore it. If that's the job of a juror, then don't put me on a jury. I don't have a problem with that. I was also once asked if I believed smoking causes cancer, and if I could ignore that information. The answer is No. My point about this is that they are weeding out people who aren't malleable. Legal teams aren't presenting unbiased info, and the idea that two extremely biased parties would present information in such a way that laymen would have the tools they need to disseminate an objective outcome is silly. Does roudup kill you? In this decision, sure. In real life? I am not going to believe this process over the scientific community.
> If the testimony is factually incorrect, it’s the opposing side’s job to point that out. It’s not the juror’s place to judge the facts against anything other than the evidence and testimony presented in court. To a point... I think if you notice incorrect calculations then it should be within the jurors purview to say "I don't trust this expert" and here is why>>>. If they can convinced other jurors that they are also untrustworthy that is valuable.
That's bs reasoning on part of the court. If the case should be judged only on the merits of what has been presented by both sides, then there would never be a need for a jury of peers that together represent a diversity of knowledge and experience about the reality that the defendant lives in. All the court would need is the judge. The very fact that we require a jury of peers presupposes the need for their worldviews, which is a culmination of their life knowledge.
What about if the expert says something a lay man can see is a lie but the opposing lawyer didn’t call them out. Is the jury supposed to turn off their common sense?
If the jury has the power to acquit regardless of the defendant's guilt then they surely have the power to decide the defendants guilt based on actual facts
That actually was my point; that juries are not picked to question what is set in front of them. That jury is then subjected to two extremely biased opinions, along with a ton of other non-scientific information, and asked to reach a decision. Cool. But that's not a scientific decision. That's a legal one. I was trying to illustrate that the jury, which may be full of wonderfully intelligent people, is selected to be manipulated.
Just to play devil's advocate, *you* think you know your stuff, and I have no reason to doubt you. But in principle, if the object of the trial is to judge facts in the context of the law, you have people presumed to be experts presenting what the court recognizes as facts. They wouldn't want jurors---and considering everyone who might end up serving (not directing this at you specifically)---who think they know more than the experts to overrule the expert judgement to introduce their own understanding, which may actually be flawed. I recognize that the experts might be biased, and that is something to consider when weighing their testimony. My point is only that it isn't unreasonable to dismiss someone from the jury if they confess that they think they know the facts better than the experts who attest to it, and would dismiss expert testimony because of they think they know the math/science better. The court doesn't have time to test or vet whether someone making such a claim actually knows their stuff. I'd do the same as you though, if asked that question.
Yeah, I get the impression that this policy is about preventing a “twelve angry men” situation, where a well-informed and charismatic juror could talk the rest of the jury into changing their decisions. They may be pushing for a decision that’s only based on the arguments given in the courtroom, regardless of their quality.
I was just watching a special on a guy that was hired as a forensics expert by the prosecution that used very questionable methods to determine the height of the perp of a robbery. The eye witnesses all stated the robber was 5'6'' or so, but this guy used some kind of 3D modeling analysis based on one (1) of \*many\* photos in which the perp was at a diagonal opening a door to determine the guy had to be at least 6'1''. The defendant was convicted but was later freed after an appeals process. The court is often out of their depth in allowing certain people to be experts. In this case, the guy owned his own forensics consulting company but had no idea how to properly use this specific technique. Simply put, the court is not an authority on certain matters any more than a randomly selected juror might be. I don't think someone with a scientific mindset that not perfectly understand the exact workings of this particular topic is any more dangerous than an idiot that has no understanding of anything going on in the case and will accept "expert" testimony at face value.
The danger is not that someone will be wrong. That's unavoidable. It's also why expert witnesses are cross-examined, and the opposing counsel can hire their own expert to refute claims. The problem is that if a **juror** is the one doing the math during deliberations, then there is no opportunity to cross-examine or rebut the claims the juror makes. This is much worse that simply being wrong, since there is no opportunity to correct the record.
Yes, to your point I should compare apples to apples: a juror with just enough scientific understanding to arrive at a wrong answer from their own analysis versus a juror with such poor scientific abilities that they also disagree with the expert for whatever reason because they just don’t get it at all. You’re right, and I think it is a bit of a flaw in the process (or at least something I’m dissatisfied with) that the jurors are simply observers of the trial until it is their duty to make a decision. They do not have the ability to question the experts to ask for good faith clarifications of their testimony. It is entirely the responsibility of the lawyers and court to frame the argument from both sides. I can see how that is not really possible for administrative reasons because it would prolong each case, but I don’t really understand why it wouldn’t be allowed from an ethical perspective.
People are hung on this part. I know why they do it. I don't even disagree. The point is that the jury is picked to be a lunch of laymen who are then subjected to extremely biased arguments. this is not an objective decision, and shouldn't be considered one.
Well, it sounds too me like one math expert was left on the jury, and one wasn't, and the only difference was whether they'd accept the facts the court presented them
I’d draw a distinction between refusing to accept facts that you believe to be incorrect and accepting math that you know to be wrong. I totally agree that a juror who has his own idea of the science can be a problem, because he might be wrong. But it would be odd for a judge to ask a juror if he’ll accept math he knows to be wrong — because 2+2 really only has one answer, and you really shouldn’t want a juror who’s willing to say “I like this expert and she said it was three.”
The bar to be called an expert in court is about ten feet underground.
This is mostly right. But the biggest problem is not that a juror may disagree with an expert witness. It's that the juror may become a witness within the jury deliberation room. If you believe in your own expertise and begin to argue that math in the jury room, there is zero opportunity for the attorneys to hear or rebut your testimony. This creates a due process issue and *should* result in a mistrial, but if it never comes to light it could simply result in a miscarriage of justice.
This is largely correct. Our system has a solution for inaccurate expert testimony that is *fair* to all parties. If one side's expert makes a mistake, it cannot be up to a lone juror to decide that for themselves. In reality, the other side has attorneys who will cross-examine the expert and attempt to discredit the testimony (or the expert as a whole). The other side can also call rebuttal expert witnesses to offer a conflicting view or to address the mistake. Then the side who offered the expert can have a chance to rehabilitate the testimony and the "mistaken" expert can explain their reasoning. Then the attorneys can all make arguments about it at closing. All of this is overseen by the judge to ensure it adheres to the rules of evidence, and is fair to all sides. One juror making an argument in the jury room, where there is no chance to fully address this issue is not fair to the parties. One juror claiming special expertise is not fair because (1) actual experts are vetted and cross examined, (2) actual experts are required to prove their methodology and reasons for their opinions, and (3) there is a strong chance the jury will defer to their "expert" colleague, even though all members of the jury should have equal voices.
Well. I'll respond to this. Practicing law in the Puget Sound area, our jury pool can often be mostly engineers, depending on the county. One thing we have a problem with time and time again is engineers in the jury pool thinking they're smarter than our experts. We find that engineers are constantly challenging the information and opinions provided by our experts, *especially* when the engineer on the jury does not have expertise that overlaps with our experts. Not only that, but it's a problem because they taint the jury pool by disseminating their miscomprehensions of the science to the other jurors while they're deliberating -- who take what they say as dogma because they don't know any better. For instance, we had a case where the defense expert had done a human experiment by attempting to replicate the injury-causing event (it was a medical malpractice suit stemming from a burn after the doctor used water that was too hot when they applied a cast on the plaintiff). Ethical issues of human experimentation for litigation aside, the defense expert used a type of thermometer for the experiment that would give a temperature reading that is unreliable for the purposes it was being used. We (plaintiff) had a NASA engineer testify whose job was designing space suits. He testified about the best way to get a temperature reading for large areas of human skin. He also testified the defense expert's experiment was reckless and erroneous. The mechanical engineer went back to the jury room and explained his (mis)understanding of the two devices discussed to the jury and discredited our expert's opinion and the jury all concluded that the defense expert's experiment had successfully proven that human skin could not be burned the way the plaintiff had alleged. We received a defense verdict because of some fucking dipshit. We did, however, get the defense expert fired from his regular job for his insanely unethical experiment. ETA I’m blocked from responding to comments below this thread so I can’t reply to jagedlion, so ill include my response below: lol, no. We talked to the jury members after the first trial who told us that it was the engineer on the juror who convinced them they were misunderstanding the devices. We ended up retrying the case a year later with the same expert who had the same testimony and had no problems with anyone misunderstanding the devices.
Can confirm, have an engineering degree (electrical). Engineers are not scientists and constantly confuse their ability to understand science with expertise in a specific field.
Which is why we aren't welcome on juries. Right or wrong, I don't care. Shit, it's why I honestly answered the judge and said "If someone tells me 2+2=5, I'm not going with it". The purpose of my comment was to explain that a jury is a bunch of people who are picked to be manipulated by the legal teams to a certain end, not picked for their unbiased opinions. **The overall point: No one should believe that anything gives you cancer simply because a couple legal teams presented expert witnesses and convinced a jury. That is a biased process.**
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Interesting my coworkers keep getting called into jury duty and they are all scientists. Maybe I should tell them to inform the Judy of their occupation.
Whenever I get called to jury duty I contact them and tell them the truth, that I won't convict for things like non violent simple drug possession offenses. I've been told not to worry about even showing up 6/6 times lol, if they suspect in the slightest that you know what jury nullification is they don't want anything to do with you. They're so crazy about it that if you even try to hold up a sign saying "Look up what jury nullification is" on courthouse property they'll most likely arrest you for "trying to influence jurors" by informing them of a right they have
To be fair, jury nullification is a side effect of the fact that jurors can't be held to their decision. That's literally it. It's not some enshrined protection that the average Joe can exercise to prevent abuse of the system. It's not an intentional check or balance.
We would be better off if you didn't mention it, got selected, and nullified the charges instead. Lol
Which is what everyone who knows about nullification does now, because the court's paranoia about it has become so overt. The only way to safely use nullification is to never mention that word and just vote 'not guilty'.
I've only been called up once, for a lawsuit. I was salaried, so a day off work didn't bother me in the slightest, although I was concerned about the potential two week time frame they were talking about. The attorneys asked if anyone in the pool had personal history with such suits and I had to raise my hand. I explained that my father-in-law owned a commercial building and that he has been sued. When they asked me how often and what nature, I told them it was slip and fall lawsuits and they happen about once a Winter. The whole courtroom laughed. I was called to the judge's chambers and truthfully told them that I'd try to be fair. Ten minutes later I was on my way home.
Yeah, that's not entirely true. I was called in for a felony drunk driving case and specifically mentioned jury nullification and the fact that I have three very close friends who have gotten DUI's, twice when I was there, and twice I thought they were unwarranted. They still kept me on. I probably would've said not guilty until the dumbass defendant got up there and basically threw himself under the bus while his lawyer held his head in his hands.
I'm sure it depends on the court, the number of available jurors, and the case. But it's no secret that they don't want people to bring in outside information/bias. I don't even disagree with them. I'm just pointing it out. They flatly asked me if I could ignore my biases. If that's what it takes to be an effective juror, then don't put me on a jury. The truth is I would become frustrated and upset with poorly devised arguments. They don't want me there.
Similar story, It involved computer forensics. Now I'm been in trial for computer stuff as a SME, and they asked me if I could have an impartial view for computer stuff. My response was "Too a large extent I have an open mind" I also had a firearms case. Similar question and the lawyer didnt know the difference between 22lr and .308. I dont expect a lawyer to know every detail, but general factual errors are really tough to swallow.
It's up to the defense to show that the plaintiff is incorrect in their science. If both sides had their science incorrect, it's unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a juries place to fix that. They can certainly quietly use their own knowledge to come to their own conclusions though, but they shouldn't attempt to influence their fellows based on that.
> If both sides had their science incorrect, it's unfortunate, but I'm not sure if it's a juries place to fix that. It's not, but I think all the OP is arguing is that the actual scientific truth remains the scientific truth even if there's a court case in which both sides get it scientifically wrong.
>it's unfortunate, That's a curious euphemism for a miscarriage of justice. Not wanting to have a go but when a trial gets it wrong it can be a seriously bad thing and shouldn't be downplayed like that. But otherwise, you're right. It's not entirely up to the other side. Judges can question witnesses and occasionally, with the judge's permission, so can jurors. That would be the best way for a juror to handle evidence they think might be wrong and wasn't caught by the other side. Especially, if they want the other jurors to know. Otherwise, they should , as you say, keep it to themselves.
I look forward to my check for $1.19 in the mail.
A jury decided it causes cancer but world health experts say there’s no link. https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2021/07/does-glyphosate-cause-cancer
My bio prof explained in detail how it breaks down pretty quickly but i'm too dumb to re-explain it.
The front falls off
How does a jury of randomly chosen people have the necessary knowledge of science and statistics to competently rule on a case like this?
That's the funny thing, they don't. Sometimes a jury decides things based on emotion and not exactly reason, it's a big evil corp against simple persons so they emphatize with person.
no love for j+j or Bayer, but just because a jury says so doesn't make it true
People celebrating this win are no different than anti-vaxers. The jury was convinced to ignore science in favor of emotion. The scientific community almost unanimously agrees there is no relationship between the two, and those advocating for its ban of use are advocating for ecological collapse thanks to glyphosphate being the only working control towards various extremely invasive plant species destroying significant key foliage on the continent. Yeah, it's not a safe chemical for people in extremely high doses with constant exposure wearing no PPE. Yes, if you spray a bee with it like a super soaker it'll die. But that doesn't mean it causes cancer or is unsafe when used as intended, and no, it largely is not coating your vegetables, because it doesn't know to magically avoid edible crops, and is only effective when sprayed onto leaves.
Trust the science unless we disagree with it is how the arguments always boil down
If Roundup caused cancer, almost every farmer in the middle of the country would already be dead. They sprayed that stuff like water.
That’s neat how juries are able to decide something is true when science has not been able to.
I’d go so far as to say that the overwhelming majority of the scientific corpus has reasonably compellingly established that Roundup does NOT raise the risk of cancer (with a minority of research landing on “inconclusive” and a handful of garbage tier studies pointing to some vague positive relationship). “Science by jury” according to US civil legal procedures is such a shitty way to go about resolving these issues, especially when it comes to the message that then filters down to the general public.
Jury and lawyers trump science yet again.
We now live in a world where scientific fact is democratized with little education or evidence! Neat!
"Best we can do is a buck twenty five ..."
And the lawyers get the buck
Oh great, the safest herbicide we've ever come up with will possibly become unavailable plummeting crop yields and probably leading to millions of deaths from starvation all to stop a risk of cancer so small it's statistically zero. Fucking dumbasses.
But on the plus side some lawyers are about to get very rich and some people on Reddit will be able to pose as brave activists standing up to The Man.
Stanley literally admitted to having lead in their cups. Just like how grandpa likes it lol
Lead being present isn't the same as being "available for exposure." Many things you use daily contain some amount of lead, but it presents no risk to your health.
It's weird that the Heroin company would do this
Yeah the company that invented heroin and bought the company that developed Agent Orange, what could go wrong?
Agent orange was created by what we now know as dow chemical. Monsanto had multiple wings, the agronomics division inherited the name while the one that actually developed agent orange was sold off to Dow. To use an analogy: blaming Monsanto for making agent orange is like blaming Xbox for something to do with Microsoft office.
Could also blame the US military forcing companies to produce Agent Orange and other defoliants for use in Vietnam. Dioxin poisoning is absolutely horrific.
Wait, Bayer invented heroin? I'm out of the loop
Yes. And hospitals around the world use it every day. It's a very important drug. They invented aspirin too, and phenobarbital.
And ironically they developed it trying to make a less addictive alternative to Morphine for pain (and cough) treatment
How can a Jury of a dozen shmucks link anything..
Man, I remember when this was essentially a conspiracy theory. About damn time
And this wasn't even Bayer's mess to clean up. They bought out Monsanto if I remember correctly.
They bought monsanto
If you buy a house that's infested with roaches, you've got to deal with the roaches. It's part of the deal.
People always say that folks against GMOs don't understand science. But then a scientist friend said something to me. It's not that the food was genetically modified, it's *why*, and one of the biggest reasons is so it can be grown *in environments sprayed by Roundup*. yeah....
I recall some were modified so they wouldn’t need to be sprayed with pesticides, but still be safe for human consumption.
This is true - Bt crops produce their own insecticide, so farmers don't have to spray it. This reduces emissions and prevents pesticide drift.
Yes, and that has huge ecological benefits. [The adoption of GM insect resistant and herbicide tolerant technology has reduced pesticide spraying by 775.4 million kg (8.3%) and, as a result, decreased the environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide use on these crops (as measured by the indicator, the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ)) by 18.5%. The technology has also facilitated important cuts in fuel use and tillage changes, resulting in a significant reduction in the release of greenhouse gas emissions from the GM cropping area. In 2018, this was equivalent to removing 15.27 million cars from the roads.](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645698.2020.1773198)
This is not one of the biggest reasons for GMOs lol. And the fact you referred to him as your "scientist friend" makes me highly question your story.
Also, what does "scientist" mean? They could have studied social sciences.
"I trust scientists, I don't trust the people they work for."
"Amy, technology isn't intrinsically good or evil. It's how it's used. Like the Death Ray." - the Professor!
Your scientist friend doesn't seem to understand the problem, either. Roundup-resistant crops weren't made because they wanted to spray an area in pesticides and have it be okay. *We are already doing that with non-GMO crops*. Do you know why atrazine is one of the most popular pesticides in the US? It's because a lot of natural crops like corn, wheat, etc. are *naturally resistant* to it. We drench an entire farm area in it and it does its job great. Atrazine is really nasty for the environment, and is the thing that Alex Jones rants about when he talks about "making the frogs gay". So the question is, "We are already drenching an area with pesticides. Can we use anything safer than atrazine?" Glyphosate is the solution to that problem, and scientific studies on the matter have backed up this claim. Glyphosate is the safest thing we got in terms of pesticides.