Roundup maker to pay $10B in cancer settlement
Bayer, the world’s largest seed and pesticide maker, has agreed to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims in the United States that its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, the company said Wednesday.
The figure includes $1.25 billion to deal with potential future claims from people who used Roundup and may develop the form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the years to come. It’s rare that we see a consensual settlement with that many zeros on it,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford University Law School.
Bayer, a German company, inherited the legal morass when it bought Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, for $63 billion in June 2018. It has repeatedly maintained that Roundup is safe and will continue to sell the product without adding a warning on the label.
The settlement, which covers an estimated 95,000 cases, was extraordinarily complex because it includes separate agreements with 25 lead law firms whose clients will receive varying amounts. Most of the lawsuits filed early on were brought by homeowners and groundskeepers, although they account for only a tiny portion of Roundup’s sales. Farmers are the biggest customers, and many agricultural associations contend glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, is safe and effective.
Bayer still faces at least 25,000 claims from plaintiffs who have not agreed to be part of the settlement.
“This is nothing like the closure they’re trying to imply,” said Fletch Trammell, a Houston-based lawyer who said he represented 5,000 claimants not taking part in the settlement. “It’s like putting out part of a house fire.”
But Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who oversaw the mediation process, said he expected most current plaintiffs to eventually join the settlement. “In my experience, all those cases that have not yet been settled will quickly be resolved by settlement,” said Feinberg, a veteran mediator best known for running the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. “I will be surprised if there are any future trials.”
Bayer said the amount set aside to settle current litigation was $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion, including a cushion to cover claims not yet resolved. It said the settlement included no admission of liability or wrongdoing.
Individuals, depending on the strength of their cases, will receive payments of $5,000 to $250,000, according to two people close to the negotiations.
Talks began more than a year ago at the prompting of Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, who was overseeing hundreds of federal Roundup lawsuits.
Chhabria appointed Feinberg to lead negotiations for an agreement that would include all the cases, including thousands of others filed in state courts and other jurisdictions.