On September 6th, a New York judgeย blocked Monsanto’s attempt to subpoenaย documents from the political activist group Avaaz.ย The biotech firm requested the subpoena in February 2018 as part of a Missouri lawsuit alleging that its herbicide Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
According to Scott Partridge, Monsantoโs vice president for global strategy, the companyย suspected there was a “…. coordinated campaign between Avaaz and the plaintiffโs lawyers [to spread] misinformation about the safety of glyphosate ….โ while Avaaz lobbied against glyphosate’s re-authorization in Europe in 2017.
Avaaz denied any connection to the attorneys in the Missouri case. โWe have never spoken to the plaintiffโs lawyers,โ Emma Ruby-Sachs, Avaaz’s deputy director, told the Guardian in February. โWe didnโt even know this case existed until we got the subpoena. Iโm 100% confident of that, as we had to look it up and it took a while to figure out what it was.โ She added that handing over the documents to Monsanto would constitute a violation of the group’s right to privacy.
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New York State judge Shlomo S. Hagler granted Avaaz’s petition to quash the subpoena on September 6th, ruling the documents Monsanto requested were “utterly irrelevant” to the lawsuit in Missouri.
