By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – Bayer AG and BASF have won a new trial on $60 million in punitive damages they were ordered to pay a Missouri peach farmer who said dicamba, a herbicide they produced, drifted onto his orchard and harmed his crops.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a federal jury was wrongly told to assess punitive damages for Bayer and BASF together, rather than separately. It said a new trial was needed to determine punitive damages for each company.
Bayer, BASF and a lawyer for the farmer, Bill Bader, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The order does not affect the jury’s verdict that the companies are responsible, and leaves in place its award of $15 million in actual, non-punitive damages.
The jury had originally awarded $250 million in punitive damages, for a total verdict of $265 million, but a federal judge later slashed the punitive portion to $60 million, bringing the total down to $75 million.
Bader’s lawsuit, one of more than 100 similar lawsuits over dicamba, went to trial in early 2020. Bayer in June 2020 announced that it would pay up to $400 million to settle the remaining dicamba lawsuits.
Bader, who operates Missouri’s largest peach orchard near the Arkansas border, said many trees were killed when dicamba drifted onto his property from nearby soybean and cotton farms.
Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, began selling dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds it developed in 2015 and 2016, respectively, leading to an explosion of dicamba use, Bader and other farmers have said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed restrictions on the use of dicamba in November 2018 over concerns about potential damage to nearby crops.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)
