Bayer has slashed its earnings forecast Wednesday due to, amongst other things, a growing global legal battle surrounding the carcinogenic weedkiller Roundup.

The weaker earnings forecast adds to a number of challenges facing the German drugmaker as it braces for years of legal wrangling over the cancer risks of glyphosate-based weedkillers.

Bayer said the number of plaintiffs seeking damages over Monsanto’s Roundup and Ranger Pro herbicides had risen to 8,700 from 8,000 from last month, and said that it expected more to sue. It has vowed to defend itself in court.

The German company’s newly acquired Monsanto subsidiary was left in shock in August after they lost a landmark cancer trial in San Francisco and was ordered by the Judge to pay over USD 289 Million in total damages to the former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, a California father who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was caused by Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup.