Bayer announced on Feb. 17th that Monsanto proposed a class settlement agreement covering current and future claims. This settlement is independent from the Supreme Court case.
The Monsanto vs. Durnell case has been building over the past couple of years. Monsanto, an agrochemical company, started receiving lawsuits about their Roundup product around 2015. They then sold to Bayer in 2018, leaving Bayer to fight these lawsuits and give out settlements now.
Roundup is a herbicide used on agricultural crops like soybeans, corn, cotton, and many more. It can also be used on grass, so many people in non-rural areas use it too.
Brigit Rollins, a staff attorney at the National Agriculture Law Center, has been following the case.
“You do see a lot of homeowners. The plaintiff in Durnell, the case that's before the Supreme Court, was a homeowner,” Rollins explained. “I don't know if he worked for the city that he lived in, or he just sort of volunteered to do some weed control and lawn maintenance at his local park.”
Plaintiffs claim that after using Roundup for much of their lives, they now have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). According to the National Library of Medicine, there are some studies that suggest a link between NHL and glyphosate-based herbicides.
There has been an assortment of people who have come forward, from school groundskeepers to farmers. People are pointing towards one ingredient, glyphosate, as the cause.
On the agriculture side of things, glyphosate is needed for farmers to have their number of high-yielded crops. Rollins has seen Bayer indicate that if they cannot settle this case, they may look at scaling back its production.
With mixed verdicts from various states, the case is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Georgia, Missouri, and North Dakota have seen cases that ruled in favor of Bayer. In California and Pennsylvania, Bayer has settled with plaintiffs. Meanwhile, lawsuits continue to be filed in other states, nationwide.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved Roundup for many years and has said that their studies have not indicated that glyphosate leads to cancer. Monsanto, and now Bayer, were following the federal findings and approvals.
Some states are saying that Monsanto failed to warn consumers that being exposed to Roundup would cause cancer and has now called for Bayer to pay some of these plaintiffs.
Rollins stated, “The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), that governs how we regulate pesticides in this country, says that states cannot require pesticide manufacturers to include language that is different from – or in addition to – what is approved for the Federal label.”
On the flip side, FIFRA has also said that it is illegal to misbrand a pesticide that you are selling.
With conflicting view points and jurisdictions between various regulatory bodies and governments, it is not immediately obvious how the Supreme Court will rule.
Rollins explained, “Monsanto vs Darnell is really all about, how does state law and federal law come into conflict, and what do they do when they come into conflict?.”
The agriculture world is waiting to see where their stance on it will be.