Bayer could do with a few Aspirin these days. On July 16th a judge in California rejected a request by the German chemicals giant (which makes the painkiller) for a retrial of a case in which jurors awarded the plaintiff $80m after concluding that Roundup, Bayer's bestselling herbicide, caused his cancer. The judge's decision to reduce damages to $25m offered only marginal analgesic relief. The verdict could open the floodgates to 13,400 other plaintiffs around the world who claim to have been harmed by Roundup. It comes on top of another headache caused by Austria's lower house of parliament, which voted this month to ban glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, from November.
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