SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Bayer says it is committed to easing the concerns of plaintiffs lawyers and a federal judge as it tries to reach a settlement of thousands of current lawsuits –and possible future cases - over the weedkiller Roundup.
Lieff Cabraser and Bayer notified the federal court hearing the multidistrict litigation this week that they would withdraw part of their initial stab a settlement regarding future claimants.
The settlement would have created a science panel to research whether Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, like more than 100,000 plaintiffs and a cancer research agency says it does.
But just about every other government regulator says it doesn’t. The U.S. Department of Justice has taken this stance, and a California judge recently ruled it was wrong to place one of California’s infamous may-cause-cancer Prop 6 5 labels on the product.
The part to be worked out is how to deal with individuals who don’t have NHL now but might in the future and want to sue Bayer, which is the parent company of Roundup-maker Monsanto.
“Bayer remains strongly committed to a resolution that simultaneously addresses both the current litigation on reasonable terms and a viable solution to manage and resolve potential future litigation,” the company said in a statement.
“Mass tort settlement agreements like this are complex and may require some adjustments along the way, but the company continues to believe that a settlement on appropriate terms is in the best interest of Bayer and all of its stakeholders.”
The settlement that was announced in June was negotiated by Bayer and the plaintiffs firm Lieff Cabraser, which said it could deliver clients representing 95% of the current cases in exchange for as much as $9.6 billion.
Lieff Cabraser said the settlement terms were fair to future claimants who have not contracted NHL yet because they would receive benefits from a $1.25 billion future claims pool while not being subjected to “the luck of the jury pool.” Proposed was a four-year moratorium on new suits while the science panel does its research.
California federal Judge Vince Chhabria expressed pessimism in a filing this week though, doubting the fairness to future claimants who would one day be bound by the science panel’s findings, leading to the withdrawal of that part of the settlement by Lieff Cabraser, with the consent of Bayer.
Chhabria is a former San Francisco deputy city attorney who took to the bench in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2014 after appointment by President Barack Obama.
The Roundup MDL has been heavily litigated since its creation in 2016. Plaintiffs have one win there and two in state court despite the dispute over whether Roundup causes cancer.
Sparking the litigation was the ruling of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, though its non-voting chairman was Chris Portier, a scientist who signed on as a paid plaintiff expert shortly after IARC reached its conclusion.