Global agrochemical manufacturer Bayer has asked the US Supreme Court to decide whether federal law preempts thousands of state lawsuits alleging it failed to warn people that its popular weedkiller could cause cancer.
- Bayer's new request to the nation's highest court comes as it is simultaneously pursuing legislation in several states seeking to erect a legal shield against lawsuits targeting Roundup, a commonly used weedkiller for both farms and homes. Bayer disputes the cancer claims but has set aside $16 billion to settle cases and asserted Monday that the future of American agriculture is at stake, the AP reports.
- In a court filing Friday, Bayer urged the Supreme Court to take up a Missouri case that awarded $1.25 million to a man who developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after spraying Roundup on a community garden in St. Louis. The federally approved label for Roundup includes no warning of cancer. Bayer contends federal pesticide laws preempt states from adopting additional labeling for products and thus prohibits failure-to-warn lawsuits brought under state laws.
- The Supreme Court in 2022 declined to hear a similar claim from Bayer in a California case that awarded more than $86 million to a married couple. But Germany-based Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in 2018, contends the Supreme Court should intervene now because lower courts have issued conflicting rulings. The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Bayer's favor last year while the 9th and 11th Circuits have ruled against its stance.
- An attorney representing the St. Louis gardener says Bayer is "really grasping at straws." "The reality is they don't want to put the warning on it because they're afraid" that if people "realize it's unsafe, it will reduce sales," says attorney Jim Onder, whose firm has more than 20,000 clients with failure-to-warn claims regarding Roundup.
- Bayer faces about 181,000 Roundup claims, mostly from residential users. Because of that, Bayer stopped using the key ingredient glyphosate in Roundup sold in the US residential lawn and garden market. But glyphosate remains in agricultural products. It's designed to be used with genetically modified seeds that can resist the weedkiller's deadly effect, thus allowing farmers to produce more while conserving the soil by tilling it less. Bayer has said it might have to consider pulling glyphosate from US agricultural markets if the lawsuits persist. "This is a bigger threat to innovation in general, when we think about agriculture," said Jess Christiansen, head of communications for Bayer's crop science division.
(Last month, a jury in Georgia
ordered Bayer to pay more than $2 billion in a Roundup lawsuit.)
(More
Roundup stories.)
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