Roundup Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed Over Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Risk

A lawsuit filed this week against Monstanto indicates that farmer and his dog both died due to forms of lymphoma, which were allegedly caused by side effects of Roundup exposure.

The complaint (PDF) was filed by Teri Michelle McCall in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on March 9, indicating that repeated exposure to Monsanto’s popular weedkiller killed her husband, Anthony Jackson McCall, who operated a farm with her for 40 years in Cambria, California.

The Roundup wrongful death lawsuit indicates that McCall attempted to avoid exposure to most pesticides and herbicides throughout his career, since they were known to be toxic. However, she alleges that Monsanto’s claims that Roundup was safe caused him not to take the same precautions around that chemical.

Following use of the weedkiller on the farm, McCall was admitted to the hospital to treat enlarged lymph nodes in his neck in September 2015, and he was subsequently diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin Lymphoma linked to Roundup exposure.

Despite aggressive treatments for the cancer, including multiple rounds of chemotherapy, Teri Michelle McCall indicates that her husband suffered a stroke caused by the treatments in December 2015, and passed away the day after Christmas.

Approximately three years before McCall’s death, his wife indicates that the family dog died after developing lymphoma, noting that the dog regularly played in areas sprayed with Roundup.

“Roundup was supposed to be safe,” the complaint notes. “After all, Monsanto promoted Roundup as being harmless to humans for over thirty years — going as far as to proclaim the product safe as table salt. The truth, however, is far more insidious. The active chemical in Roundup, glyphosate, is a carcinogen, and Monsanto has known this fact for decades.”

The case joins a growing number of Roundup cancer lawsuits filed in recent months by individuals throughout the U.S., who indicate that they developed forms of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma following exposure to the weedkiller as farm workers, landscapers, gardeners, city or county road crews and other circumstances where the widely used weedkiller is used.

In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that glyphosate probably causes cancer in humans, raising questions about the safety of Monsanto’s widely used Roundup weedkiller. The IARC specifically noted that non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a form of cancer that may be connected to Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers.

Plaintiffs allege that Monsanto knew or should have known about the Roundup cancer risks for decades, yet failed to warn consumers about the risks and the importance of taking precautions while using the weedkiller.

Roundup is one of the most widely used herbicides containing glyphosate, which was first introduced by Monsanto in the 1970s.

A recent U.S. Geological Survey on glyphosate usage nationwide found that an estimated 2.6 billion pounds of the herbicide has been sprayed on America’s agricultural land over the two decades since the mid-1990s, when Monsanto introduced “Roundup Ready” crops that are designed to survive being sprayed with glyphosate, killing the weeds but not the crops.

As Roundup injury lawyers continue to review and file cases for individuals throughout the U.S. who have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or other forms of cancer, it is ultimately expected that Monsanto will face several thousand complaints in courts throughout the U.S.