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From: Gary Kitahata -
To: Council Testimony
Cc: Clerk-Council n19 i'a R1 1 9 1 28
Subject: Letter of support for Bill No.101(Relating to Herbicide Use)
Date: Sunday,November 17,2019 10:32:52 AM
Council of the County of Hawaii:
I recommend your approval of Bill No. 101, which would add a new Article 24 to the
County Code relating to herbicide use. I believe that my experience with this issue
could be of value in your considerations.
I have lived in Hilo since 2002 and also maintain residence in San Francisco. My in-
laws, wife and children are all graduates of Hilo High. For business reasons I remain
a legal resident of San Francisco.
In June 2018, I was selected to serve on a San Francisco Superior Court jury in a
case called Johnson vs. Monsanto. It was the first-ever civil case against Monsanto,
brought by a groundskeeper linking a glyphosate-based herbicide with his non-
Hodgkin lymphoma.
After a six-week trial that involved hours of expert testimony about herbicides and
cancer, my jury decided unanimously that the herbicide presented substantial danger
to persons using the product, that Monsanto failed to adequately warn of these risks
and that it knew or reasonably should have known of these dangers, and that this
failure to warn was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff(that harm
being cancer with expected mortality within a year).
Although in a civil trial in California only 9 of 12 jurors need to agree for a verdict, we
unanimously agreed to award the plaintiff$39,253,209.32 in compensatory damages.
Because we further agreed that by "clear and convincing evidence that Monsanto
acted with malice or oppression in the conduct" upon which we based our verdict, we
further awarded the plaintiff$250 million in punitive damages. The trial court judge
reduced our award of punitive damages to match the compensatory damages, but
this decision is currently under appeal. Mr. Johnson is still alive at present, but has
received no damage payments while Monsanto is appealing.
My jury did not have to conclude that glyphosate definitively causes cancer in
humans. Our task was simply to find that it was more likely than not that the herbicide
could have caused cancer and that Monsanto was derelict inits duty to determine the
product's safety and to product consumers and applicators. We were influenced by
the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, part of the World Heath
Organization) classification of glyphosate in 2015 as a "probable carcinogen" and by
Monsanto's internal e-mails displaying a deliberate lack of interest in any product
safety research on glyphosate-based herbicides.
So my conclusion is that glyphosate-based herbicides are potentially carcinogenic,
probably more to County employees serving as applicators than to the general public
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Comm. N I4%4•-J32
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Ref. To: `f.
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(although this may simply point to the need for much more research into the general
impact). Bill No. 101 is therefore important for both worker and public safety.
Gary Kitahata• Principal, Kitahata&Company
Independent Registered Municipal Advisor
California office: 137 Joost Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94131 •415-337-1950 office
Hawaii office:548 Hinano Street, Hilo, HI 96720•808-934-7547 office
415-710-1251 mobile/texts•650-419-3929 conference call line(no access code)
general e-mail: gkitahataagmail.com
corporate e-mail: garyakitahata.co