Despite the expectations of many, given the broad coverage in media of all types – and the case’s mention on the docket for Jun. 13 – the US Supreme Court has remained silent on whether or not it will hear Bayer’s petition on packaging labels for Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide.
Bayer’s advice to shareholders expressing concern about the development of the company’s stock at its early May annual general meeting, to bide their time and wait for the US Supreme Court to deal with the issue of warning labels for agrochemicals packaging, seems to have been too hasty.
Bayer has settled a collection of claims from US plaintiffs that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused their cancer, the US newspaper St. Louis Dispatch reports. This, it said, avoids a publicity-sensitive trial that was due to start this week in the Missouri city that was Monsanto’s global headquarters before it was acquired by the German group for $63 billion in 2018.
Bayer has now won two of five cases in which US plaintiffs have charged that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused their cancer. All the cases have been heard in the state of California. In the second consecutive victory for the German group, a jury in San Bernardino County found that Roundup was not the cause of a woman's non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
During its Dec. 10, session, the US Supreme Court has said it will review Bayer’s petition to have the country’s highest court decide whether a federal district court’s judgment in favor of Edwin Hardeman should be allowed to stand.
A US federal appeals court has upheld a $25 million jury award for the plaintiff in one of three major court battles Bayer has fought and lost over claims linking Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
