SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Bayer says it has reached a formal $2 billion agreement with the lawyers pushing tens of thousands of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma lawsuit.
The issue in the massive litigation is whether Roundup weedkiller made by Bayer’s Monsanto causes NHL. Most research says it does not, and the federal government agreed last year. But that hasn’t stopped lawyers from signing up clients through television advertisements, leading to a multidistrict litigation proceeding that began in 2016 in San Francisco federal court.
On Feb. 3, the lawyers leading the MDL and Bayer filed their motion for settlement before Judge Vince Chhabria. Of the $2 billion, $170 million is earmarked to go to plaintiffs lawyers.
Lawyers leading the MDL are Lieff Cabraser, Dugan Law Firm and Audet & Partners. NHL cases have inspired other litigation, too, including from shareholders and an uninjured man who wants to see a cancer warning on the label because Roundup contains glyphosate – even though a California judge has ruled that wouldn’t be appropriate.
Nearly every regulatory body in the world says glyphosate does not cause cancer, with the exception of the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Its former non-voting chairman, Chris Portier, signed on as a paid plaintiff expert shortly after IARC reached its conclusion.
Juries in the U.S. have hurt Bayer and Monsanto, including a federal jury that awarded Edwin Hardeman $80.3 million last year in a bellwether trial intended to establish liability and damages expectations for the thousands of similar cases gathered in the MDL.
Bayer is appealing the verdict, since reduced to $25.3 million, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Judge Chhabria allowed the MDL cases to proceed even though he acknowledged the plaintiffs’ scientific experts “sometimes crossed into the realm of junk science.” He cited Ninth Circuit law, which he said allows for looser standards for expert testimony under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Daubert ruling than the other federal districts.
The settlement establishes a $1.63 billion fund to compensate qualified claimants during an initial four-year program. It also funds a science panel whose findings would not be preclusive but could be used as evidence in future litigation.
Monsanto continues to sell the product as it maintains it is healthy. A court in France recently found the same in tossing out the only pending lawsuit there.