Bayer seeks to end federal Roundup litigation after Supreme Court win

Bayer is pushing to dismantle federal litigation involving nearly 4,000 lawsuits that claim its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, leveraging a recent victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. The company argues that the Supreme Court's decision, which limits plaintiffs' ability to sue based on the product's warning label, effectively removes the basis for the consolidated federal cases.

U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria in San Francisco is holding a status conference to determine the future of these cases. The Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs cannot argue Roundup's label was insufficient because the Environmental Protection Agency has already determined it does not require a cancer risk warning. Bayer contends that these 'failure to warn' claims are central to the lawsuits and that other arguments, such as negligence and design defect, are merely variations of this primary claim.

Plaintiffs' attorneys, however, argue that the Supreme Court's ruling is narrowly focused on the warning label and does not impact the viability of other claims. Bayer has stated that this ruling is unlikely to affect over 60,000 similar claims pending in state courts, many of which are part of a proposed $7.25 billion settlement awaiting review by a Missouri judge in August. Bayer maintains that decades of studies show Roundup's key ingredient, glyphosate, is safe and does not cause cancer.