A month-long Roundup cancer jury trial held in a state court in St. Louis, MO returned a defense verdict for Bayer on Sept. 6. The decision marks the fifth consecutive defense verdict in Roundup litigation. 

The trial consolidated the cases of three plaintiffs, one woman in Seattle and two men in Florida. All three plaintiffs allege that they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from applying Roundup weed killer to their gardens over the course of many years. St. Louis is headquarters of Monsanto, the chemical-agricultural giant that was acquired in 2018 for $63 billion by the German pharmaceutical multinational, Bayer AG. 

Bayer lost each of the first three Roundup personal injury trials, with juries awarding the consumers tens of millions in each case. Despite being cleared of liability in the most recent five Roundup trials, Bayer still faces tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by plaintiffs who refused to sign on to the 2020 $11 billion settlement that resolved roughly 100,000 claims. 

Although juries have cleared Bayer in the last 5 Roundup trials, Bayer’s hopes of having Roundup litigation resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court was shattered earlier this year. The nation’s high court announced that it would not review the second and third Roundup verdicts: Alva and Alberta Pilliod ($87 million) and Edwin Hardeman ($25 million). Bayer petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review those cases due to the fact that federal labeling laws on pesticide products normally trump failure-to-warn claims at the state level. 

Roundup cancer plaintiffs have alleged that Bayer failed to disclose the risks of glyphosate, the main active ingredient in Roundup and actively withheld the dangers by influencing scientific reports. 

The recent string of victories for Bayer were state court decisions, and Bayer was able to select the cases being tried. Thus, the outcomes of these 5 most defense verdicts are not expected to influence future Roundup litigation—should an additional settlement not be reached.