The Supreme Court says that Bayer can’t escape liability for the people injured by the popular weedkiller Round Up. Mike Papantonio is joined by journalist & podcast host, Rick Outzen, to discuss.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Supreme Court says that Bayer can’t escape liability for the people injured by Roundup. Now this first of all, to begin with this is a company, this is Monsanto that was sold to, to Bayer.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Who, whoever the numb nut was who bought this company. I mean, I hope that person’s been fired and ever, they never worked for the corporation again. They were advised, Bayer was advised to go in and buy Roundup. That was after three major lawsuits had determined that A, the folks, that Monsanto had been lying and phoning up rat studies. They knew that the, they knew that the, the product would cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The information was overwhelming and some, you know, some CEO says, hey, looks like a good idea. We’ll go buy this company.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: Take it from there.
Rick Outzen: Well, I think it had to be the attorneys that are representing them. The, you know, the defending attorneys, because they’re, this is a strategy here. They keep losing, $25 million case in California. They want to, they, they tried to go to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court says we’re not gonna listen to it. But this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to take a settlement all the way up to the Supreme Court, is it, Mike?
Mike Papantonio: Right. Let me give a shout out for Biden on this. Biden got in the way of them doing this.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: He actually had his attorney general do something real significant, which is go before the Supreme Court and say, you know, you should not accept this review. We have all the information we need to understand this is bad, bad stuff. We know glyphosate is killing people all over the world. And, and, and I’m gonna send my attorney general to say, this is a bad idea. Now, Trump, just the opposite. Trump said, no, we oughta, you need to hear this. We need to protect Monsanto. We need to protect Bayer. Now listen, W H O had come out in, 10 years ago now, came out and said, this is bad stuff that’s killing people all over the world in third world countries because we were telling the world, hey, without Roundup, without glyphosate, we’re gonna have a food, food shortage. W H O came out and said, that’s a lie.
Rick Outzen: Well, and, and, but our EPA approved it.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Rick Outzen: And that’s what’s used in the cases against, against your firm, against all the firms that are representing the victims of this. That’s what’s used against them. The other thing that we, we found, and I started looking at this story for a while ago, you got the state of Mississippi, they actually recommend Roundup.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Rick Outzen: To kill all the weeds as, before you prepare for the crops.
Mike Papantonio: There’s a reason for it. When I, I took depositions in this case.
Rick Outzen: Okay.
Mike Papantonio: I took five major depositions before, even before the, the first one went to trial. And what we saw was that the, they’re masters of putting their people in important political positions. Matter of fact, they were so good at it that they had, they had three people that were basically running the EPA. They had people in the White House that had come up through the ranks and now were advising Trump about this and that dealing with the product. They were masters of doing that all the way down to the state level. So it doesn’t surprise me. It wasn’t just Mississippi that did that, by the way, there’s about, there’s about 14 states that jumped on the Monsanto bandwagon and said, hey, this is a great idea. That all the information showed that this company knew, knew 50 years before they were selling it, that it was killing rats with and they understood the science. It was non Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They phonied it up, they covered it up. And here’s where it really gets ugly. The EPA knew it and they bought into it anyway.
Rick Outzen: Well, and they have, I mean, they have settled. There’s been a, you know, a couple of, you know, what a, let’s see what $11.6 billion settlement.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, yeah.
Rick Outzen: But they didn’t decide about the future cases. And that’s what’s biting ’em in the butt. Continue it.
Mike Papantonio: The future cases are gonna be a disaster because it’s a, it’s a slow process.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a latent cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. You may be exposed year one and may not have any symptoms for five or six years beyond that.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: So that’s what they, they need to be worried about it. They shouldn’t put the product on. The people who did it should be prosecuted.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They should be perp walked. And unfortunately, we don’t do that to people that are dressed up in suits.
