The California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District on Monday reduced the damages that life sciences company Bayer has to pay to a school groundskeeper who developed cancer from being exposed to Roundup. The court upheld the trial court’s finding that Monsanto failed to adequately warn of its products’ potential dangers and that the products had a design defect.

Dewayne Johnson worked as a school district groundskeeper, where he heavily used Roundup Pro and Ranger Pro. In 2014, Johnson was diagnosed with the mycosis fungoides classification of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is one of the rarest forms of the cancer. He then sued Monsanto on the theories that Roundup products had a design defect and that Monsanto provided inadequate warnings.

The trial court found that Monsanto failed to adequately warn of its products’ potential dangers and that the products had a design defect. The court awarded Johnson $39.3 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. Following this decision, Monsanto filed a motion for a new trial on multiple grounds, including for excessive damages. The trial court denied the new trial on the condition that Johnson accept a reduced award of punitive damages because the court concluded that due process requires that a punitive damages award equal the amount of the compensatory damages award. The trial court reduced the punitive damages to $39.3 million, which Johnson accepted.

On appeal, the court reduced the award of future non-economic damages and punitive damages. The court recognized that Johnson “has suffered, and will continue to suffer for the rest of his life, significant pain and suffering.” The court found that evidence supported an award of $1 million per year for Johnson’s suffering, which could not exceed the expected life expectancy at the time of trial. The court concluded that punitive damages were appropriate because “the evidence amounted to substantial evidence that Monsanto acted with a willful and conscious disregard of others’ safety.” The court did, however, reduce the amount of punitive damages so that it fit a 1:1 ratio.

The appeals court reduced the future noneconomic damages award to $4 million, which resulted in a total reduced award of about $10.2 million in compensatory damages. Punitive damages were also reduced to about $10.2 million.

Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, announced in June that it would pay $10 billion to settle other outstanding litigation.