Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biotech giant, said Tuesday that it had reached an agreement that would pay plaintiffs $7.25 billion to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits that claimed the weedkiller Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The agreement was submitted to a Missouri circuit court judge in St. Louis, and approval is not guaranteed. A $10 billion settlement unraveled in 2020 after a judge objected to how future claims would be handled.
The latest deal would cover both current and future claims, and create a fund that Bayer would pay into over the next 17 to 21 years, according to a company statement.
Bayer executives hailed the agreement as a significant step in the company’s efforts to control costs from litigation against Roundup, which Monsanto developed in the 1970s. Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2016. Since then, the company has set aside $10 billion to settle lawsuits over the herbicide. With this settlement, Bayer’s legal costs would approach $14 billion in total, according to Bayer’s statement.
Bill Anderson, Bayer’s chief executive, previously said the company would stop manufacturing Roundup, which farmers around the world use to kill weeds and increase crop yields, if it couldn’t find a way to end the lawsuits.
“Today marks an important milestone for the company,” Mr. Anderson said on a call announcing the settlement. Shares of Bayer rose more than 7 percent after the announcement.
A major factor in driving the settlement is an upcoming Supreme Court case that will decide whether federal law shields Bayer from many Roundup-related lawsuits.
Most of the lawsuits against Bayer have been filed in state courts, arguing that the company violated state labeling laws because it did not warn users that Roundup could cause cancer. Bayer argues that the Environmental Protection Agency has found Roundup to be safe and that, according to federal labeling standards, it should be protected from the more than 40,000 active lawsuits, of 170,000 total, that have been filed against the company.
Ensuring that those suing received some compensation before the Supreme Court ruling was paramount. “If Monsanto prevails, many claims nationwide would be dismissed or curtailed,” said Christopher Seeger, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
If the settlement is approved, it will not be affected by the outcome of the Supreme Court case.
Mr. Anderson, the Bayer chief executive, said the settlement “complements” the Supreme Court case, even though many of the cases that Bayer is settling could be invalidated if the justices rule in its favor. He said this agreement and a Supreme Court win would provide “the tightest possible form of containment” of litigation, by settling existing cases and making future cases easier to win.
Bayer has played legal Whac-a-Mole since it acquired Monsanto, settling tens of thousands of suits against Roundup before reaching a trial. But a number have gone to trial and resulted in verdicts of hundreds of millions of dollars for a single case. Many of those awards have been reduced on appeal.
Kevin Draper is a business correspondent covering the agriculture industry. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].
The post Bayer Agrees to Pay $7.25 Billion to Settle Roundup Lawsuits appeared first on New York Times.
