WILMINGTON, Del. (Legal Newsline) – Lawyers are asking for up to $11 million from a proposed class action settlement in their case that doesn’t allege anyone has been hurt by Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, but that the company should have put a could-cause-cancer warning on it.
The agreement was presented to a Delaware federal judge on June 14, and the potential windfall for lawyers comes even after the federal government and the State of California have said that warning customers that Roundup causes cancer would be misleading.
No matter for lawyers at Rhodunda Williams & Kondraschow and Milstein, Jackson, Fairchid & Wade who sued the company last year and reached the agreement more than five months after Monsanto filed a motion to dismiss the case.
The company has resisted claims Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but plaintiffs lawyers recruited tens of thousands of plaintiffs, scored a couple of key verdicts and are working on a multibillion-dollar settlement of cancer claims.
The Delaware case, filed by plaintiff Scott Gilmore, alleges no such injury but is rooted in false advertising claims.
“Plaintiff’s claim is expressly preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (‘FIFRA’), which bars any state-law ‘requirements for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from’ its (federal) requirements,” Monsanto had argued in a motion to dismiss.
“FIFRA requires that pesticides be sold without deviation from the EPA-approved label and requires that pesticides not be misbranded by including false or misleading statements. EPA has repeatedly determined that no cancer warning is warranted for Roundup products and, in fact, has concluded that such a warning would be false and constitute illegal ‘misbranding.’”
The settlement requires Monsanto to pay between $23 million and $45 million to class members who will be able to claim refunds if they fill out a form asking for the quantity and type of Roundup purchased, the store where the purchase occurred and the approximate date. Proof of purchase will not be required.
Lawyers say they will ask for 25% of the settlement for their fees.
The amount paid back to the customer will depend on the amount of claims submitted. There are other similar class actions pending around the country that the settlement will try to resolve.
The company is also trying to settle injury claims with a multibillion-dollar agreement that could net plaintiffs lawyers $800 million. A federal judge in San Francisco will decide whether to approve the settlement.
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.
The U.S. Department of Justice has submitted its opinion to courts that glyphosate doesn’t cause cancer, and a California judge recently ruled it was wrong to place one of California’s infamous may-cause-cancer Prop 65 labels on the product.