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Consumers sue over cancer they attribute to Roundup

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Bayer aims to prevent suits making state law claims

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Bayer faces 67,000 such suits in U.S. courts

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The appeal is Bayer's latest try at the Supreme Court

By Diana Novak Jones

June 30 - The U.S. Supreme Court asked President Donald

Trump's administration on Monday for its views on Bayer's

bid to sharply limit lawsuits claiming that the

company's Roundup weedkiller causes cancer and potentially avert

billions of dollars in damages.

Bayer has asked the justices to hear its appeal of a lower

court's decision to uphold a $1.25 million verdict awarded by a

St. Louis jury in a case in Missouri state court in which a

plaintiff named John Durnell sued after being diagnosed with

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma he attributed to his exposure to Roundup.

The Supreme Court asked the Justice Department for its views

on whether the justices should take up the appeal.

The Missouri Court of Appeals rejected the German

pharmaceutical and biotechnology company's contention that

federal law governing pesticides bars lawsuits like Durnell's

making claims under state laws. Bayer is facing more than 67,000

such lawsuits in U.S. state and federal courts. Other federal

and state appellate courts have made similar rulings.

Roundup is among the most widely used weedkillers in the

United States.

Bayer is arguing that consumers should not be able to sue it

under state law for failing to warn that Roundup increases

cancer risk because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has

found no such risk and requires no such warning. Bayer argued

that federal law does not allow it to add any warning to the

product beyond the EPA-approved label.

The company appealed the verdict in Durnell's case to the

Missouri Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for Durnell asked the Supreme Court to turn away

Bayer's appeal. They said the plaintiff relied on Bayer's

advertising and not just the label when he chose to use Roundup,

and the company's marketing failed to warn consumers of the

product's risks.

The company has paid about $10 billion to settle most of the

Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get

a settlement covering future cases. New lawsuits have continued

to pour in since then. Plaintiffs have said they developed

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using

Roundup, either at home or on the job.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion

purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, has said that

decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient,

glyphosate, are safe for human use.

The company has had a mixed record at trial in the Roundup

lawsuits. Bayer has prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but

it was also hit with large jury awards in the past few years,

including a $2.1 billion verdict in a case in the U.S. state of

Georgia in March.

Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to consider the Roundup

litigation before, but was rebuffed in 2022. Since then, one

federal appeals court agreed with the company in a split from

other appeals courts.

Bayer has threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S.

market as it fights the litigation. The company replaced

glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weedkilling

substances.