Last week we looked at the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court on the lack of labeling:
German Chemical Colossus Bayer Gets Mixed Reception At Supreme Court On Roundup Suits
And from the Environmental Working Group project, The New Lede, April 30:
US judge calls proposed Bayer Roundup settlement a “filthy” deal
In a tense hearing on Thursday, a federal judge who has been overseeing thousands of cases in nationwide Roundup litigation expressed scathing criticism of a proposed class action settlement that Roundup maker Bayer is pushing forward in a Missouri court.
The proposed $7.25 billion deal, which Bayer and a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys unveiled in February, appears “mind-boggling,” “legally problematic,” plagued with “major problems,” and was filed in a secretive and hasty manner that amounted to a “filthy” deal, US Judge Vince Chhabria said in a hearing over the proposed agreement.
Chhabria, who serves in the Northern District of California, is in charge of multidistrict litigation (MDL) involving people suing the former Monsanto company, now owned by Bayer. Plaintiffs in the cases allege that exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate weed killers caused them to develop cancer and Monsanto failed to warn them of cancer risks.
Chhabria has overseen the litigation since 2016, and in 2021 rejected a proposed $2 billion class action settlement filed in his court.
Bayer has since paid out more than $11 billion in jury awards and settlements to resolve more than 100,000 claims, but still faces approximately 60,000 unresolved cases. Company officials have said they hope the new settlement plan will help bring the litigation to a close.
The new class action settlement effort is not filed in Chhabria’s court, but instead was filed by Bayer and the group of plaintiffs’ lawyers in Missouri, in the St. Louis Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis, where many Roundup cases are pending.
“How this went down”
The agreement was filed on Feb. 17. Lawyers for Bayer and the team of plaintiffs’ lawyers joining with Bayer in the deal held a meeting with the St. Louis judge the same day they filed it, without public notice and without a transcript being made of the conversations.
Bayer and the supporting plaintiffs’ counsel tout the deal as a means to “deliver billions of dollars of compensation to tens of thousands of plaintiffs.”....
....MUCH MORE
