By AOJ
GG NOTE: RATED PG-13-ish FOR LANGUAGE
Hey folks! AOJ would like to warn you that he is a very mad agent, so if I don’t seem my usually jovial self, well, here’s why:
I was taking my lunch break at work today, checking email. There was an email from a friend in Argentina who wrote: “My gosh, what’s happening?” Along with a link to a tweet she saw.
She wrote in English, so I knew it was more serious than usual—she wanted to be sure I got the message. The tweet contained a link to the appeal papers Monsanto filed today within the Court of Appeal of the State of California, First Appellate District, Division One. There was second link to something called a Motion for Judicial Notice. Here is some of the text of the motion:
Monsanto Company requests that this court take judicial notice of several posttrial [sic] communications (primarily emails) from jurors to the trial court, two local newspaper articles, and a paid full-page newspaper advertisement entitled, “Dear Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos, What is a Life Worth?” – all of which were intended to pressure the trial court to reject its tentative ruling on the posttrial [sic] motions and uphold the jury’s $289 million verdict.”
AOJ is one of those jurors and is mentioned in one of the articles. An op-ed by Neil Young and Daryl Hannah in the San Francisco Chronicle was also mentioned. I never saw the “What is a Life Worth” ad—how did I miss that?
I read this motion with great interest. The fact that Monsanto made this motion is not surprising. I would sum it up the same way I have summed up many legal moves they have made in the Johnson case, the Hardeman case, and now the Pilliod case: They are grasping for straws. (They are out of bullets, so they can’t shoot themselves in their feet anymore).
Here’s the problem: A fellow juror noticed that our letters to Judge Bolanos were attached to the motion with un-redacted personal information. Full names, emails, and home addresses. I contacted the tweeter who took down the link and informed me that it was from a Bayer press release. Well fuck me.
So let’s just recap: Monsanto spies spied on prospective jurors during jury selection at the Johnson trial. When the trial was over, Monsanto attorneys called jurors and their family members for days. After the letters came out, Monsanto flaks took to social media to continue with the already tired accusations that the jury was “inflamed.”
In fact, Monsanto continues to play the “inflamed jury” card in the appeal filing: “Although the sheer magnitude of the verdict is proof alone of passion and prejudice, the record here makes it clear that the passions of the jury were deliberately inflamed by counsel.”
Hey Werner Baumann, the fact you bought a company that is literally using an entire planet as a guinea pig for a fraudulently tested weedkiller, one of a multitude of sins, makes the recent legal proceedings seem relatively civilized. That is over.
YOU FUCKED WITH THE WRONG JUROR.
Have a fun day on Friday as Bayer shareholders hopefully shit-can you for buying Monsanto last year and sending their stock down over 30%! You reap what you sow.
©️Robert Howard All Rights Reserved
