OAKLAND — Forty California residents are suing chemical giant Monsanto, alleging that exposure to the company’s Roundup weed killer caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The complaint, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, seeks compensatory and punitive damages from defendants Monsanto Co. and Willbur Ellis Company, LLC., for wrongful death and personal injuries.

In the lawsuit, which was filed by consumer attorney firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the plaintiffs allege that Monsanto promoted false data and attacked legitimate research that showed the danger of glyphosate, an ingredient in its popular weed killer.

The lawsuit comes as part of a slew of complaints against Monsanto over the health risk of glyphosate. According to a news release from Baum Hedlund, Monsanto is facing more than 700 individual claims filed in state and federal courts throughout the country.

Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco unsealed documents that suggest that Monsanto employees had ghostwritten studies later attributed to academics that U.S. regulators used to determine glyphosate is not a cause of cancer. The documents also indicated that a former senior employee at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency worked with the company to suppress reviews of the ingredient.

Missouri-based Monsanto began marketing the glyphosate-based herbicide in 1974 under the brand name Roundup. California-based Wilbur Ellis, the other defendant in the suit, sold and distributed Roundup in California.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 determined that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic” to humans. The herbicide has also been linked to other health issues and environmental impacts.

Monsanto argues against that research.

“Regulators around the world, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the relevant bodies in Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada and the state of California itself, have determined that glyphosate is safe to use and does not cause cancer,” said Scott Partridge, vice president of global strategy at Monsanto, in a statement emailed to this news organization. “While we empathize with anyone facing these terrible illnesses, there is no evidence that glyphosate is the cause. The very long and well-established history of safe glyphosate use – over 40 years in more than 160 countries – shows clearly that these claims are supported neither by the science nor the facts.”

Monsanto’s glyphosate products are registered in 130 countries and approved to use on more than 100 crops.

“Monsanto’s newly released documents expose a culture corrupt enough to shock the company’s most jaded critics,”  said Kennedy, Jr., who is working with the law firm on the Roundup litigation, in a statement from the firm.“Those papers show sociopathic company officials ghostwriting scientific studies to conceal Roundup’s risks from Monsanto’s regulators and customers, including food consumers, farmers and the public. One wonders about the perverse morality that incentivizes executives to lie so easily and to put profits before human life. All humanity will benefit when a jury sees this scheme and gives this behemoth a new set of incentives.”