The New York Times - USA (2020-06-25)

THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020 N B7

TECHNOLOGY | LITIGATION

Long before the internet made it easy
to share the nuances of daily life, local
newspapers and other regional publica-
tions reported the business, society and
civic news of the people in the commu-
nity. For budding genealogists, finding
an ancestor in an old microfilmed news-
paper and reading contemporaneous
accounts of her turn in the school play
or his all-city bowling championship
provide a glimpse into the past that’s
more textured than a chart of names
and dates.
Taking a more narrative approach to
the family story can be a time-consum-
ing detective project with no guaran-
teed results. But once you have a name
and know when and where the person
lived, you can start your quest to find
out howthey lived. Here’s how to get
started.

Digging Up Your Roots

If you’re just beginning to climb your
family tree and need names on the
branches, a subscription service like
Ancestry or MyHeritage can be an easy
place to start gathering information. In
addition to billions of digitized records
(like census data, draft rolls and reli-
gious registries), these services include
tutorials, articles, message boards and
other tools to help learn you learn how
to find your people.
When you get some names pinned to
your tree, you may also start to receive
hints of possible undiscovered relatives
from the site’s algorithms or the serv-
ice’s other members to help you along.
If you’re not sure you want to commit
to a regular subscription fee, look for a
free trial period.

Finding Alternative Resources

Sleuthing on a budget? Visit the Na-

tional Archives site and its “Resources

for Genealogists” page for links to

information on finding land records,

immigration and naturalization docu-

ments, census data, military-service

papers, and more. While not all govern-

ment records may be free or digitized,

the National Archives hosts a page of

links from other genealogy sites where

you can look for information.

Some ancestors are harder to trace

than others. For families severed by

slavery or overlooked by government,

the site has an Ethnic Heritage section

with tips for finding African-American

ancestors, as well as for those search-

ing for Chinese, Hispanic/Latino, Japa-

nese or Native American forebears.

FamilySearch, run by the Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, re-

quires only a free account to search its

billions of historical records. Geni.com

(owned by MyHeritage) has free basic

family-tree building services and a

large social community that encourages

members to work together. Immigra-

tion museums may also have free on-

line databases, like the Statue of Lib-

erty-Ellis Island Foundation Passenger

Search.

Diving Into the Archives

Once you have pinned your ancestors

to specific places and years, look for

local media from that time. Business

dealings, town government activity,

social gatherings and obituaries were

often reported in 19th- and 20th-cen-

tury papers. But be warned: In addition

to sometimes florid writing, articles

from certain eras and areas can be rife

with the unchecked misogyny, racism

and xenophobia of the day.

The Newspaper Archives, Indexes

and Morgues section of the Library of

Congress site has links to many dig-

itized publications, including African-

American, Cherokee and Mexican-

American newspapers.

The Ancestor Hunt genealogy site

has a section devoted to finding histori-

cal newspapers online, and the Ele-

phind site lets you search a growing

collection of digitized international

newspapers. Some archives are free,

some charge to view the microfilmed

images, and search capabilities vary.

Newspapers.com is an archive with

more than 17,000 digitized publications

dating from the 1700s. After the free

trial, subscriptions start at about $8 a

month, but you can search, clip, save

and print the articles you find.

Finding Further Reading

Libraries and historical/genealogical

societies may also have books and

periodicals that recorded the develop-

ment of the area and the people who

lived there, although you may have to

visit in person to look at the original

material if it has not been scanned.

(Some libraries also offer free access to

the commercial genealogy services.)

As settlements grew, local historians

often wrote books that chronicled that

development and its founding families.

Many of these volumes are now dig-

itized in the public domain; search

Google Books or the Internet Archive

for the town or county in question.

Your relatives may also appear in the

vital records bureaus of the states

where they lived. The RootsWeb site

offers tips on searching in its Red Book

collection of American state, county

and town resources.

And finally, if burial was the family

tradition, try the Find a Grave site, a

searchable database of cemeteries; like

Newspapers.com, it’s owned by Ances-

try. The site is still growing and often

includes published obituaries and pho-

tos of grave sites so you can remotely

visit and see where your ancestors

ultimately landed.

How to Dig Up Family History Online

Digitized newspaper archives and hyperlocal historical sites can help you learn about your ancestors.

As the social media of the 19th and 20th centuries, many local newspapers printed “status reports” of community members.

Tech Tip

By J. D. BIERSDORFER

Large subscription genealogy services like
Ancestry host billions of historical records.

The National Archives site has a huge

collection of resources for researchers.

Newspapers.com offers a searchable

archive and digitized copies of pages.

A search on the Find a Grave site might

lead you right to a relative’s plot.

Roundup, is safe, effective and
better than available alternatives.
The settlement covers an esti-
mated 95,000 cases and includes
$1.25 billion for potential future
claims from Roundup customers
who may develop the form of can-
cer known as non-Hodgkin’s lym-
phoma.
The company is taking a calcu-
lated risk that the benchmark set-
tlement will largely resolve its le-
gal problems. Bayer still faces at
least 30,000 claims from plaintiffs
who have not agreed to join the
settlement.
Werner Baumann, Bayer’s
chief executive, said that the two
critical conditions for a settlement
were that it was financially rea-
sonable and that it would bring
closure to the litigation.
“We are totally convinced” this
does both, Mr. Baumann said in an
interview on Wednesday. There is
money put aside for existing
claimants outside of the agree-

ment, he said, and a structure to
deal with future claimants that
could emerge.
Fletch Trammell, a Houston-
based lawyer who said he repre-
sented 5,000 claimants who de-
clined to join, disagreed. “This is
nothing like the closure they’re
trying to imply,” he said. “It’s like
putting out part of a house fire.”
But Kenneth R. Feinberg, the
Washington lawyer who oversaw
the mediation process, said he ex-
pected most current claimants to
eventually sign on to the settle-
ment.
“In my experience, all those
cases that have not yet been set-
tled will quickly be resolved by
settlement,” said Mr. Feinberg,
best known for running the fed-
eral September 11th Victim Com-
pensation Fund. “I will be sur-
prised if there are any future tri-
als.”
Bayer said the amount set aside
to settle current litigation was $8.8
billion to $9.6 billion, including a
cushion to cover claims not yet re-
solved. It said the settlement in-
cluded no admission of liability or
wrongdoing.
Individuals, depending on the
strength of their cases, will re-

ceive payments of $5,000 to

$250,000, according to two people

involved in the negotiations.

The coronavirus outbreak,

which has closed courts across the

country, may have pushed the

plaintiffs and the company to

come to an agreement.

“The pandemic worked to the

advantage of settlement because

the threat of a scheduled trial was

unavailable,” Mr. Feinberg said.

Talks began more than a year

ago at the prompting of Judge

Vince Chhabria of U.S. District

Court in San Francisco, who was

overseeing hundreds of federal

Roundup lawsuits.

Judge Chhabria appointed Mr.

Feinberg to lead negotiations for

an agreement that would include

all the cases, including thousands

of others filed in state courts and

other jurisdictions.

The $1.25 billion set aside for fu-

ture plaintiffs will be applied to a

class-action suit being filed in

Judge Chhabria’s court on behalf

of those who have used Roundup

and may later have health con-

cerns.

Part of the $1.25 billion will be

used to establish an independent

expert panel to resolve two criti-

cal questions about glyphosate:

Does it cause cancer, and if so,

what is the minimum dosage or

exposure level that is dangerous?

If the panel concludes that

glyphosate is a carcinogen, Bayer

will not be able to argue otherwise

in future cases — and if the ex-

perts reach the opposite conclu-

sion, the class action’s lawyers

will be similarly bound.

Pressure on Bayer for a settle-

ment has been building over the

last year after thousands of law-

suits piled up and investors grew

more vocal about their discontent

with the company’s legal ap-

proach.

Just weeks after the deal to pur-

chase Monsanto was completed in

2018, a jury in a California state

court awarded $289 million to De-

wayne Johnson, a school grounds-

keeper, after concluding that

glyphosate caused his cancer.

Monsanto, jurors said, had failed

to warn consumers of the risk.

In March 2019, a second trial,

this time in the federal court in

San Francisco, produced a similar

outcome for Edwin Hardeman, a

homeowner who used Roundup

on his property, and an $80 million

verdict.

Two months later, a third jury

delivered a staggering award of

more than $2 billion to a couple,

Alva and Alberta Pilliod, who ar-

gued that decades of using Round-

up caused their non-Hodgkin’s

lymphoma.

“Plaintiffs have gone to the

plate three times and hit it out of

the park,” Ms. Engstrom at Stan-

ford said. “When you see they’re

batting a thousand, and thou-

sands more cases are waiting in

the wings, that spells a very bleak

picture for Monsanto.”

All three monetary awards

were later reduced by judges and

Bayer appealed the verdicts, but

the losses rattled investors and

the stock price tumbled sharply.

Those cases are unaffected by

Wednesday’s settlement.

Glyphosate was introduced in

1974, but its journey to becoming

the world’s No. 1 weedkiller

gained momentum in 1996 after

Monsanto developed genetically

modified seeds that could survive

Roundup’s concentrated attacks

on weeds.

Farmers quickly latched onto

the agricultural products to re-

duce costs and increase crop

yields. In the United States, for ex-

ample, 94 percent of soybean

crops and roughly 90 percent of

cotton and corn now come from

genetically altered seeds.

But long-simmering anxieties

over possible hazards exploded in

2015 when the International

Agency for Research on Cancer,

an arm of the World Health Orga-

nization, announced that

glyphosate could “probably”

cause cancer.

Monsanto denounced the find-

ings, arguing that years of re-

search in laboratories and in the

field had proved glyphosate’s

safety. Regulators in a string of

countries in Asia, Australia, Eu-

rope and North America have

mostly backed Monsanto’s — and

now Bayer’s — position.

The longest and most thorough

study of American agricultural

workers by the National Institutes

of Health, for example, found no

association between glyphosate

and overall cancer risk, though it

did acknowledge that the evi-

dence was more ambiguous at the

highest levels of exposure.

The Environmental Protection

Agency ruled last year that it was

a “false claim” to say on product

labels that glyphosate caused can-

cer. The federal government of-

fered further support by filing a le-

gal brief on the chemical manufac-

turer’s behalf in its appeal of the

Hardeman verdict. It said the can-

cer risk “does not exist” according

to the E.P.A.’s assessment.

Then in January, the agency is-

sued another interim report,

which “concluded that there are

no risks of concern to human

health when glyphosate is used

according to the label and that it is

not a carcinogen.”

This week, a federal judge in

California referred to the agency’s

pronouncement when it ruled that

the state could not require a can-

cer warning on Roundup, writing

that “that every government reg-

ulator of which the court is aware,

with the exception of the I.A.R.C.,

has found that there was no or in-

sufficient evidence that

glyphosate causes cancer.”

Critics have countered that reg-

ulators based their conclusions on

flawed and incomplete research

provided by Monsanto. Several

cities and districts around the

world have banned or restricted

glyphosate use, and some stores

have pulled the product off its

shelf.

Part of the discrepancy be-

tween the international agency’s

conclusions and so many other in-

vestigators’ findings is related to

differences in the questions that

were asked and the way the data

was selected and analyzed.

The international agency, in

essence, was asking whether

glyphosate has the potential to

cause cancer. Its researchers

judged the chemical “probably

carcinogenic to humans,” and

added it to a list that already in-

cluded beef, pork, mobile phone

use, dry cleaning and working

night shifts. Glyphosate escaped a

stronger classification — “carcin-

ogenic to humans” — that in-

cludes bacon, red wine, sun expo-

sure, tobacco and plutonium.

Government regulators, by

contrast, are looking at the risk

that glyphosate will actually

cause cancer given most people’s

levels of exposure. Sharks, for ex-

ample, are potentially dangerous.

But people who stay out of the wa-

ter are not at much risk of being

attacked.

In court, lawyers argued over

the available scientific evidence.

Perhaps most damaging for the

defendants, though, were revela-

tions that reinforced Monsanto’s

image as a company that people

love to hate.

Monsanto’s aggressive tactics

to influence scientific opinion and

discredit critics undercut the com-

pany’s credibility. It had taken aim

at hundreds of activists, scien-

tists, journalists, politicians and

even musicians. At one point, a

team monitored Neil Young’s so-

cial media postings after he re-

leased an album, “The Monsanto

Years,” in 2015 and a short film

that attacked the company and ge-

netically modified food.

“Monsanto didn’t seem con-

cerned at all about getting at the

truth of whether glyphosate

caused cancer,” Judge Chhabria of

the U.S. District Court in San

Francisco said when he reviewed

the Hardeman verdict last sum-

mer.

With Bayer’s purchase in 2018,

the Monsanto brand ceased to ex-

ist, but the shadows over one of its

marquee products persisted.

Bayer announced Wednesday

that it would separately spend up

to $400 million to settle claims

stemming from another Mon-

santo chemical, dicamba, that can

drift after it is sprayed and dam-

age other crops. Bayer also put

aside $820 million to settle long-

standing lawsuits related to toxic

chemicals in the water supply

known as PCBs — for polychlori-

nated biphenyls — that were

banned in the United States four

decades ago.

Bayer Agrees to Pay $10 Billion to Settle Claims That a Weedkiller Causes Cancer

JOSH EDELSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

In 2018, a California jury awarded $289 million to Dewayne Johnson, top, a

school groundskeeper, after concluding that glyphosate caused his cancer.

Above, Edwin Hardeman, with his wife, Mary, won an $80 million verdict.

JEFF CHIU/ASSOCIATED PRESS

FROM FIRST BUSINESS PAGE

95,000

The approximate number of cases
covered by the settlement.