Chemical conglomerate Bayer has withdrawn its earlier billion-dollar settlement proposal in the RoundUp mega-claim because a U.S. judge expressed doubts about it.
Two weeks ago, Bayer announced it wanted to pay $9.6 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits related to glyphosate. That offer was intended to resolve global lawsuits against the agrochemical giant’s crop protection products and to prevent new claims.
The proposal to appoint a panel of experts to decide in advance whether glyphosate is carcinogenic for future claims was met with criticism Wednesday from the federal judge in California who oversees all U.S. lawsuits against Bayer.
District Judge Vince Chhabria said Monday he was “skeptical about the accuracy and fairness” of the proposal and questioned its constitutionality. In response, on Wednesday Bayer agreed with plaintiffs’ lawyers to withdraw the section regarding future claims. In a statement, the company said it “remains strongly committed to a resolution that both addresses the current thousands of lawsuits and provides a viable solution for future claims.”
Glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, is the key ingredient in Bayer’s Roundup herbicide. The UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer stated in 2015 that glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’ Earlier this year, the U.S. regulatory agency EPA said the chemical does not pose a risk to human health and it is unlikely to cause cancer.
Bayer has always vigorously defended glyphosate’s safety. Bayer acquired Monsanto, the original developer of glyphosate, in 2018 for $63 billion. On June 24, after months of negotiations, Bayer said it would pay between $8.8 billion and $9.6 billion to settle around three-quarters of the 125,000 U.S. lawsuits against Roundup.
For future cases, a panel of scientists would determine whether glyphosate causes cancer, and that decision would be binding for future lawsuits. It is precisely this provision that the judge is now questioning, leading Bayer to withdraw its earlier offer.
In three previous trials, U.S. court juries awarded large sums to plaintiffs who argued glyphosate caused cancer. When announcing the settlement deals two weeks ago, Bayer said it would be more cost-effective to resolve the lawsuits than to face “an increasing number of plaintiffs, more than twenty trials per year, uncertain court rulings, and related reputational damage and business consequences.”