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Oct. 16, 2025 By: Rudi Keller, Missouri Independent newspaper Jefferson City, MO -- German chemical giant Bayer must pay a $600 million Missouri court judgment that found its herbicide Roundup causes cancer, a ruling the company says could hasten a decision to stop making the popular product. The Missouri Supreme Court on Sept. 30 refused to hear an appeal in the Cole County lawsuit that initially awarded four plaintiffs $1.56 billion. The October 2023 jury award was reduced to $611 million by Circuit Judge Daniel Green, a decision upheld in May by the Western District Court of Appeals. In a statement to The Independent not attributed to any individual, Bayer said it was considering whether there were further appeals that could be filed. "We continue to believe that significant and reversible errors were committed during trial and the appellate phase and warrant review by a higher court," the company stated. Matthew Clement, a Jefferson City attorney who worked on the case, said there are no appeals left except for an unlikely review by the U.S. Supreme Court. There is another Missouri case seeking an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court but justices have not decided whether to accept it. "That's rarely successful in state cases," Clement said, "but they can certainly ask them to do that." The case is one of the few out of thousands filed in Cole County that has become final. As it fights in court, Bayer has also lobbied heavily for legislation to protect it from lawsuits at both the state and federal level. The company has failed for two years to win passage of a bill intended to shield it from litigation in Missouri. The bill narrowly passed the Missouri House earlier this year but lobbying missteps, including a campaign targeting some of the most conservative members of the state Senate, doomed it. The company did win passage of similar legislation in North Dakota and in Georgia Bayer has also sought protection from Congress. The spending bill to fund the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department would add protections intended to block state lawsuits. Similar language is being considered for inclusion in a new Farm Bill. Bayer has faced an avalanche of litigation that claims glyphosate, the product patented by Missouri-based Monsanto in 1971, causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma -- and that the label fails to warn users of the risk. Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 and operates its facilities under the name Bayer Crop Science. Bayer has paid out about $11 billion to settle almost 100,000 lawsuits with approximately 61,000 pending, according to a website that tracks the litigation involving Roundup. The company has already stopped making Roundup with glyphosate for home use and, in September, announced it was seeking regulatory approval for a new herbicide to replace Roundup for agricultural and commercial use in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and Brazil. In the statement about the lawsuit, the company pointed to an April article in the Wall Street Journal about the future of Roundup. "We're pretty much reaching the end of the road," Bayer chief executive Bill Anderson told the newspaper. "We're talking months, not years." Plaintiffs and the award In the case that is now final, a jury found that Jimmy Draeger of Eldon was due $5.6 million in compensatory damages and his wife, Brenda Draeger, was due $100,000 for loss of companionship as a result of his illness. Draeger used Roundup to manage weeds on his property in Miller County. The litigation also included Daniel Anderson of Lemon Grove, California, who was 32 when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after regularly using Roundup to manage weeds on his father's property. He was awarded $38 million in compensatory damages. To read the entire article click here. Tweet |
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