Bayer CEO Bill Anderson
Bayer said it is encouraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to seek the U.S. solicitor general’s advice about whether a federal pesticide law preempts certain claims filed in state courts involving the weed killer Roundup.
The company appeared hopeful that the high court’s June 30 invitation to the solicitor general to file a brief in Bayer’s appeal of the Durnell v. Monsanto case in Missouri would lead the court to take up the preemption issue. Bayer is the parent company of Monsanto, which manufactures the popular and widely used weed killer containing the compound known as glyphosate.
In the Durnell case, a jury awarded a plaintiff who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma $1.25 million in damages based on the argument that the company failed to warn the plaintiff of the risks of using the product. Bayer petitioned the high court to determine whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIRFA) preempts such failure-to-warn claims in state courts.
“If the court accepts the case, a decision on the merits could happen during the court’s next session, which ends in June 2026,” Bayer said in a statement emailed to the Southern California Record. “The petition argues that a split among federal Ninth and 11th Circuit courts in the Roundup personal injury litigation, on the cross-cutting question – including in this case – of whether federal law preempts state-based failure-to-warn theories, warrants review and resolution by the country’s top court.”
Bayer’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court is part of what the company said is a multipronged effort to “significantly contain” Roundup litigation by the end of 2026. Nearly 100,000 Roundup lawsuits have been settled through large-scale, multibillion-dollar settlements, according to the Miller & Zois law firm, but about 67,000 cases remain nationwide.
The number of such cases in California state courts is difficult to determine. A coordinated effort to deal with hundreds of cases occurred through the Roundup Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings (JCCP) based in Alameda County Superior Court, but these proceedings have wound down in recent years.
A total of eight Roundup cases have gone to trial in California, with half of them resulting in verdicts favorable to the company.
The federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) process continues in the Northern District of California, which reported 4,424 Roundup cases as of June 2.
Bayer maintains that a large majority of scientific research by leading regulators, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has concluded glyphosate-based products are safe.
“No regulatory authority that has independently evaluated glyphosate has found it to be carcinogenic,” the Bayer statement says. “The company has won 17 of the last 25 trials, and has resolved the overwhelming majority of claims in this litigation.”
Bayer’s CEO Bill Anderson said the “litigation industry” spends hundreds of millions of dollars targeting Monsanto / Bayer for not providing label warnings, despite federal regulators’ conclusions that the product does not cause cancer.
“When courts permit companies to be punished under state law for following federal law, it makes companies like ours a prime target of the litigation industry and threatens farmers and innovations that patients and consumers need for their nutrition and health,” Anderson said.
The company has also expressed support for a petition signed by 11 state attorneys general calling on the EPA to amend its regulations under FIFRA so that federal labeling rules preempt state laws such as California’s Proposition 65, which considers glyphosate a possible human carcinogen and requires warning labels on such products.
Another possible option is to limit or end the sale of glyphosate-based products, the company said.
