WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - More than $16 million was spent on television advertising last year related to the commercial herbicide paraquat by plaintiffs attorneys trolling for allegedly injured clients, according to a new study.
That's compared to $12.4 million spent on for Zantac litigation advertising, $8.8 million for hernia mesh litigation, $6.9 million for church child abuse litigation and $6.3 million for talc litigation promotion, says a report by X Ante.
X Ante, which tracks spending on mass tort advertising, found that, on average, more than 90,000 paraquat litigation promotions were broadcast every six minutes, with Guardian Legal Network airing its paraquat litigation television commercial almost 14,000 times.
Paraquat, also known commercially as gramoxone, is one of the most widely used industrial herbicides in the world. Plaintiff lawyers allege that use of paraquat increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Advertisements aired locally in every U.S. media market and nationally on cable and broadcast networks as well as during nationally syndicated television programming, according to the study.
It further found that in November 2021, there were 5,000 paraquat commercials broadcast compared to 12,000 in December 2021.
The TV commercials were sponsored by more than 50 law firms, lead generation companies, and other advertisers, the study noted.
Gramoxone, previously sold in partnership with Chevron, is manufactured by Syngenta, a global agrochemical company.
In June 2021, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) transferred lawsuits naming Syngenta and Chevron as defendants to multidistrict litigation (MDL) proceeding at the Southern District of Illinois federal court.
By February 2022, plaintiffs’ lawyers had filed nearly 800 paraquat MDL cases. The first lawsuit alleging a paraquat-Parkinson’s disease link was filed in Missouri in 2017 against Syngenta but the Court later required plaintiffs to amend their complaint to include Chevron Chemical as an additional defendant in the case.
In addition, a state court action in California consolidated a number of paraquat state claims there.
Prior to the spike in paraquat litigation advertising, the weedkiller Roundup was the dominant target of plaintiffs’ law firms and others soliciting legal claims on television.
Approximately $130 million has been spent since 2015 on more than 600,000 TV ads recruiting plaintiffs for Roundup claims, the report says.