Bayer (BAYN) has won a jury trial over claims by three women that its Roundup weedkiller caused their cancer, giving the German group a boost as it awaits a court decision on a $7.25bn settlement of other cases.
The St. Louis jury unanimously rejected claims of design defect and negligence against Bayer’s Monsanto unit. It was the first Roundup case to reach trial since a US Supreme Court ruling in June, which limited the legal arguments plaintiffs can bring. Bayer shares rose 4 per cent to a one-month high.
Theresa Aretino, Cynthia Fernandez and Betty Larkin sued Monsanto in 2020, saying they had used Roundup regularly and later developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Their lawyers argued that the product was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous, and that Bayer was negligent in selling it. Larkin died before the trial began. None of the three is taking part in Bayer’s proposed settlement, which a Missouri state court judge in St. Louis is reviewing.
Markus Manns, a portfolio manager at Union Investment in Frankfurt, called the verdict one of the most important trial wins for the company. Plaintiffs, he said, had “failed in their new litigation strategy to prove that Bayer had ignored the risks as early as the development stage of glyphosate.”
Bill Dodero, Bayer’s US general counsel and global head of litigation, said the outcome showed how hard it would be for other plaintiffs to succeed after the Supreme Court’s decision in Durnell. Those pursuing claims, he said, would face “significant challenges both in demonstrating they have viable claims and putting forth the necessary evidence to prove them in court.”
The litigation has weighed on Bayer since its 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, costing the company billions of dollars and depressing its share price. It faces around 65,000 claims in US state and federal courts from people who say they developed cancer after using Roundup at home or at work.
Before the Supreme Court ruling, most suits alleged that Roundup’s label failed to warn consumers of cancer risks. The court blocked that argument, holding that federal law requires herbicide makers to use the exact label approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which has concluded that the label does not need a cancer warning. Bayer contends that the ruling also forecloses other claims, including design defect and negligence, a position plaintiffs’ lawyers dispute. Thursday’s verdict is an early indication of how such arguments fare before juries.
Bayer denies the allegations and says decades of studies show that glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, is safe and does not cause cancer. The EPA has previously concluded that the chemical is probably not carcinogenic, though it is in the middle of a fresh safety review. In 2015 the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” to humans, a view Bayer dismisses as an outlier based on flawed methodology.