| A federal court jury in San Francisco just awarded $290 million in a suit brought by Mr. Dewayne Johnson who proved his terminal non-Hodgkins lymphoma was caused by Monsanto’s Roundup ® herbicide. The operations of a Federal District Court, where the Monsanto trial took place, are a stark contrast to the parody of justice presented in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the “vaccine court.”
If Mr. Johnson had been injured by a vaccine, instead of made ill by a chemical, the case never would have gone to court, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA) took away the right of victims of vaccine injury to a jury trial, even though that right is supposedly guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution. NCVIA gave vaccine manufacturers and physicians who administer them complete liability immunity. They cannot be sued.
In the “vaccine court” not only is there no jury, there isn’t even a judge, just a “special master.” The federal judge in the Monsanto trial is appointed for life, specifically to insulate the judge from reprisals following unpopular decisions. Special masters, however, work directly for the agency that has to pay out any damages they award, and they are only appointed for four-year terms.
Internal Monsanto documents were key in Mr. Johnson’s suit. “We were finally able to show the jury the secret, internal Monsanto documents proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer,” said Brent Wisner, attorney for Johnson, in a statement. In the “vaccine court” those documents never would have seen the light of day because the right to “discovery,” the power to compel a defendant to produce documents, was taken away from victims of vaccine injury by NCVIA.
If Mr. Johnson had been killed by a vaccine, the most his survivors could collect in the vaccine court would be $250,000. The award from the San Francisco jury is enough to pay the maximum award for well over 1000 deaths by vaccines.
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