By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK, July 8 (Reuters) – Bayer on Thursday will try to convince a federal judge to dismantle the federal litigation that consolidates nearly 4,000 lawsuits alleging that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, seeking to build on a recent legal victory at the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria in San Francisco is holding a status conference to determine the path forward for those cases after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that plaintiffs cannot sue Bayer by arguing that Roundup’s warning label failed to warn users about cancer risks. Bayer has argued that the decision should lead to the dismissal of the consolidated federal litigation.
The company has separately said the ruling is unlikely to affect more than 60,000 similar claims pending in state courts, most of which it is seeking to resolve through a proposed $7.25 billion settlement that a Missouri judge will review in August.
Bayer, which acquired Roundup when it purchased Monsanto in 2018, has said that decades of studies have shown Roundup’s key ingredient glyphosate is safe, and does not cause cancer.
Chhabria had initially scheduled the status conference for Tuesday, but delayed the hearing by two days to ask Bayer and the plaintiffs for more detail on the impact of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court said plaintiffs cannot argue that Roundup’s warning label was insufficient under U.S. state laws because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already concluded that the label does not require a warning about cancer risk.
Bayer has argued in filings to Chhabria that “failure to warn” claims are at the heart of the lawsuits, saying that the consolidated federal litigation has “no reason to exist” after the Supreme Court ruling and that all of the plaintiffs’ other claims, including negligence and design defect, are merely variations of the central argument that the company sold Roundup without an appropriate warning.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys countered that the Supreme Court ruling was limited to Roundup’s label, and does not affect the viability of other claims commonly asserted in Roundup personal injury lawsuits, such as design defect and negligence claims.
Bayer’s Monsanto unit did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Robin Greenwald, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the consolidated litigation should not be shut down.
Chhabria in a Monday order said both sides had submitted “unsatisfying” initial responses to his questions about how the cases should proceed, and that they “should be prepared to plow ahead” on complicated legal questions without assuming that the cases would all be dismissed or that they would all move forward.
The case is In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 16-md-02741
For the plaintiffs: Robin Greenwald and Robert Quigley of Weitz & Luxenberg; and David Dickens of The Miller Firm
For Monsanto: Brian Stekloff and Rakesh Kilaru of Wilkinson Stekloff
Read more:
What does Bayer’s US Supreme Court win mean for the thousands of Roundup lawsuits?
US Supreme Court scales back Roundup cancer suits in win for Bayer
Bayer’s $7.25 billion Roundup settlement gets August hearing date
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth)
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