Supreme Court Decision Could Block Thousands of Cancer Lawsuits Connected to the Weedkiller Roundup

Bayer’s stock price jumped more than 15 percent on Thursday after the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, overturned a verdict involving the weed killer Roundup.The ruling could block thousands of lawsuits against the German agroindustry and biomedical conglomerate. It owns Monsanto, which manufactures and distributes Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide. Bayer has faced billions of dollars in verdicts over Roundup.The Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly evaluated glyphosate and concluded that it is not likely to cause cancer. The EPA has not required labels on glyphosate-based pesticides like Roundup to include a cancer warning under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Federal rules require the use of the EPA-approved pesticide label.The World Health Organization, however, has classified glyphosate as a possible carcinogen. Hundreds of epidemiological and toxicological studies also conclude glyphosate is likely carcinogenic.John Durnell blamed his non-Hodgkin lymphoma on his use of Roundup for 20 years and in 2019 sued Monsanto in a Missouri state court on a failure-to-warn tort claim. He asserted that Monsanto should have included a cancer warning on Roundup’s label. A jury agreed and awarded Mr. Durnell $1.25 million. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion Thursday stated that the pesticide act expressly preempted Mr. Durnell’s state-law-based failure-to-warn claim because EPA rules trump state rules on chemical labeling. He added that Mr. Durnell’s argument would “expose manufacturers to potentially massive tort liability for doing what EPA required them to do, and eviscerate the ‘uniformity’ of EPA’s labeling determinations.”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a dissent. Justice Jackson wrote that the majority “misunderstands” the pesticide act and “misinterprets” the scope of the act’s preemption, “and ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered.”Bayer hopes the decision will help to significantly contain litigation by preempting conflicting state laws. “This litigation has enormous costs for the company and has impacted public trust. The decision brings overdue justice on an issue that should have been clarified much earlier. It’s time to put it behind us,” the company’s chief executive officer, Bill Anderson, said in a release.The company says American farmers have “operated under a cloud of legal uncertainty” for years because of litigation.The decision is a blow to Robert F. Kennedy’s Make American Healthy Again movement, whose supporters wants to rein in pesticide use. Its members were already highly critical of President Trump’s February executive order that sought to shield glyphosate manufacturers from lawsuits.“Today’s Supreme Court decision to strip citizens of the right to sue chemical companies for failure to warn of harm will go down as the worst decision for human health in recorded history,” the founder of Moms Across America, Zen Honeycutt, said in an X post. Congressman Thomas Massie, who is also critical of glyphosate use, reacted negatively to the decision. “Even if the legal reasoning of the court is sound in this case, it’s a blatant travesty of justice” Mr. Massie posted on X.Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna said she will introduce legislation stripping pesticide companies of any liability protections. “These companies purposefully omit labeling information knowing their products cause cancer and other health problems. It is time they are held accountable. Enough is enough,” Ms. Luna said in an X post.

Supreme Court Decision Could Block Thousands of Cancer Lawsuits Connected to the Weedkiller Roundup

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