A 12-year-old judicial battle pitting a cereal farmer against Monsanto, the biotech giant, goes to a fourth round Wednesday before the French courts. Farmer Paul Francois won his initial case in 2012, and its appeal by Monsanto in 2015, after suing the US firm for poisoning him through inhalation of its Lasso weedkiller. Now, after a technical review by the final court of appeal, the case gets bounced back to appeal level after a ruling by the higher court that the case should be decided not so much on whether Monsanto provided adequate information about its product, but on whether its chemicals were dangerous, according to Francois Lafforgue, one of the farmer’s lawyers.
