Central Valley and Fresno County Roundup Cancer Lawsuit Attorneys
Roundup, a popular herbicide used extensively in Fresno County and elsewhere in Californian’s Central Valley, has recently been found to cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. These diseases can be fatal. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or other related conditions, and you have been exposed to dangerous levels of Roundup over years, The Driscoll Firm, LLC would like to talk to you about your legal options.
We offer a free consultation, and we provide legal representation on a contingency fee basis if we take your case. We will not charge you a retainer or any other legal fees. We only get paid if or when we win your case.
Call The Driscoll Firm, LLC today at 800-900-7704. We will review the facts of your case and the amount of Roundup exposure you experienced, and we will work to get you justice.
Roundup is very effective at killing weeds while not harming cash crops. Monsanto, the company the developed, manufactured, and marketed the herbicide, insisted for decades that Roundup was safe. Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, is also one of the world’s largest distributors of seeds for crops.
Monsanto developed Roundup-resistant seeds for significant cash crops, including corn, s,oybeans, and wheat. This way, farmers could apply the herbicide liberally in their fields without killing beneficial plants, thereby increasing yields. It is estimated that agricultural operations sprayed over 4 billion tons of Roundup on fields all over the globe since the herbicide was first marketed in the early 1970s. Many agriculture workers were repeatedly and routinely exposed to Roundup over the years.
California’s Central Valley has long been celebrated as one of the richest agricultural regions in the world. Fresno County is recognized as the country’s most productive county in terms of agricultural revenue. One of the downsides to all that productivity is that Fresno County and other counties in the southern Central Valley experienced, by a wide margin, more Roundup exposure than the rest of the valley.
Fresno County Roundup Exposure
Just under one million people live in Fresno County.
A wide range of agricultural products grow in Fresno County, including:
- Grapes
- Cotton
- Almonds
- Tomatoes
- Plums
- Oranges
- Peaches
- Nectarines
Food processors and manufacturers in the county include Sun-Maid Raisins, Flicks Candy Company, and Harris Ranch Beef Company. Fresno County also produces Ethanol.
On average, 156 Fresno County residents are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma every year. The trend for diagnosis of the disease in the county is stable, with a slight decline of .2 percent per year. Fresno County’s incidence rate for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is slightly lower than in California as a whole.
However, a study published in 2015 by the Center for Biological Diversity found that 54 percent of the Roundup applied in the entire state of California occurred in eight counties in the southern Central Valley, including Fresno County. The eight counties encompass only 18 percent of the land in California. Those eight counties are among the most impoverished in the state; about 53 percent of the residents of those counties are Hispanic, as compared to 38 percent in California as a whole.
It certainly looks as if growers in Fresno County and the Central Valley thought they had found a population that wouldn’t fight back, and applied copious amounts of the herbicide to increase their crop yields.
The legal landscape changed when plaintiffs won three major Roundup cancer lawsuits against Monsanto which included punitive damages in the tens of millions of dollars. At issue was whether the company failed to provide sufficient warnings on the packaging about possible risks of getting the disease or another related blood cancer and not necessarily whether Roundup caused the plaintiffs’ non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,.
Does Roundup Exposure Cause Cancer?
The issue of sufficient warning labels on Roundup is important because Monsanto has insisted the herbicide was not toxic to humans. Since farmers grew cash crops from Monsanto’s genetically altered seeds that were Roundup-resistant, and it was supposedly nontoxic, many workers and consumers failed to wear protective clothing when using Roundup and absorbed the product through their skin.
Monsanto’s claims that the herbicide was not toxic to humans began to fall apart in 2015 when the International Agency for Research (IAR) decided to test Monsanto’s claim and that of other herbicide manufacturers that their products were harmless to humans and livestock. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. The chemical inhibits an enzyme that allows weeds to synthesize amino acids necessary for life. The IAR study found that glyphosate had a similar effect in the human gut, where it inhibited enzymes that help humans synthesize amino acids, which are the necessary building blocks for proteins. This resulted in cancer cells in humans.
This conclusion led to several lawsuits against Monsanto in civil court to hold the chemical company accountable and pay damages to those who had been exposed to Roundup and later developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In every product liability lawsuit, the discovery process is critical to determining what the company knew and when did they know it. Both sides are required to exchange relevant documents so that ultimately the courts can get the truth.
The three Roundup victories revealed that Monsanto had known for years that there were risks to humans exposed to glyphosate, but they kept those risks hidden. Indeed, several documents showed the company had strategized how to keep the damaging information out of the public eye.
Obviously, warning labels on Roundup’s packaging would constitute an admission that Monsanto had not told the public everything it knew about their product. As a result, the company fought hard against such labeling even when it recognized the risks. But in 2015, after the IAR report, the state of California required that Monsanto and all other companies marketing glyphosate-based herbicides to include warning labels that cite the risk of contracting cancer from the product.
One of the most telling pieces of information about Monsanto’s liability and negligence for glyphosate exposure concerned the issue of wearing protective gear when handling Roundup. Even as Monsanto fought against including warning labels about avoiding skin contact when applying Roundup, Monsanto’s internal directives required workers always to wear protective clothing when handling the product.
Possible Damages You Can Collect from a Roundup Cancer Lawsuit
With three plaintiff’s victories in major Roundup cancer lawsuits in California, there are now ample precedents for other successful lawsuits in the state and across the country, where many legal actions are currently pending.
If you were exposed to Roundup over a period of years and have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or another related cancer, you might be able to win money damages from Monsanto/Bayer, including
- Medical expenses, current and future
- Lost wages from work
- Loss of future earnings capacity
- Transportation expenses for travel to treatment
- Pain and suffering
Further, if the company is found to have been negligent and/or reckless, without regard for the health of their customers, punitive damages may be possible. Call The Driscoll Firm, LLC now for a free consultation to discuss your legal options.
How We Can Help
Litigating complex product liability cases are our focus at The Driscoll Firm, LLC. They are also one of our most important motivations for going into law in the first place. Companies who distribute harmful products operate under the assumption that any consequences can simply be attributed to “the cost of doing business,” while they make large profits. In the case of Monsanto and Roundup, the company actively covered up the cancer-causing potential of the herbicide while selling billions of tons of it around the world.
This lethal cynicism warrants the sternest economic sanctions, which is why The Driscoll Firm, LLC wants to help you file a product liability claim in Fresno County against Monsanto/Bayer.
We will gather evidence supporting your claim, including medical reports, conduct depositions of relevant Monsanto corporate officers and others, and will carefully review all internal documents regarding the marketing of Roundup.
We will then develop a claim that demonstrates how you were victimized by the product and handle all communications and negotiations with Monsanto/Bayer to settle your claim in a fair and reasonable way. If we cannot negotiate a settlement, we are fully prepared to take the company to court to get you the damages you and your family deserve for your ordeal.
Call The Driscoll Firm, LLC today at 800-900-7704 for our free consultation to determine if we can help you. It is time for you to get justice.
