Monsanto Co. and BASF Corp. are liable for the herbicide dicamba’s damage to a farmer’s peach orchards, the Eighth Circuit said [July 7], but it tossed a $60 million award and called for a new trial to separately assess what punitive damages each company owes.

The evidence “establishes different degrees of culpability between the co-conspirators,” according to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Therefore, the lower court should’ve told the jury to “separately assess punitive damages against Monsanto and BASF,” the appeals court said.

Bader Farms Inc. said in its lawsuit that its orchards were damaged by dicamba drift between 2015 and 2019. Monsanto sells Xtend cotton and soybean seeds, which are modified to tolerate dicamba and glyphosate, according to court filings. The company also sells XtendiMax, a herbicide that contains dicamba.

The jury originally awarded the plaintiff $250 million in punitive damages, but the companies successfully convinced a judge to reduce it to $60 million in November 2020.

Monsanto and BASF argued Bader failed to prove causation. The companies told the appeals court that third-party farmers “broke the chain of proximate causation” by using dicamba herbicides illegally and against official instructions.

Monsanto had direct relationships with the third-party farmers, and it “exercised some degree of control over their acts,” the court said.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here