The second Roundup weedkiller cancer trial held in the St. Louis, MO area in recent months returned a jury verdict on Nov. 13, making it six wins in a row at trial for the Monsanto Corp, the disbanded company and former maker of the controversial herbicide Roundup-branded product line. The case of Stacey Moore v. Monsanto began Oct. 21 and was tried in a St. Louis County Circuit Court. The Monsanto Corporation was headquartered in Creve Coeur, MO, which is located in St. Louis County.
Moore’s trial was the third Roundup case tried in the state of Missouri.
The most recent Roundup verdicts come after Monsanto lost the first three trials, all of which resulted in huge payouts for the plaintiffs. Those verdicts, reached in 2018 and 2019 led Bayer AG, the German multinational corporation that acquired Monsanto for $63 billion in 2018, including the company’s legal liabilities over Roundup and other chemicals, to announce a global Roundup settlement for over $10 billion. That settlement resolved approximately 95,000 Roundup lawsuits. But over 30,000 Roundup plaintiffs refused to join the settlement.
Bayer also tried to resolve any Roundup lawsuits that would be filed in the future for an additional $2 billion, however, that plan was rejected by the federal judge who is overseeing the consolidated cases in multidistrict litigation (MDL). An MDL is created to avoid similar cases clogging up the federal circuit courts.
There are 10 Roundup trials with court dates scheduled to begin later this year, midway into 2023. Those trials will be held in state courts. One Roundup trial just kicked off in a California Superior Court in San Francisco.
Roundup plaintiffs allege that they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) because of frequent exposure to the ingredients in Roundup products, including the active ingredient, glyphosate, which is a chemical compound that the International Agency for Research on Cancer labeled as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.
Monsanto recently resolved another weed killer cancer trial by settling with the plaintiff, a former landscaper who used QuickPRO, a stronger glyphosate-based alternative to Roundup, Genetic Literacy Project reported. Terms of the settlement remain confidential.
Legal experts suggest that Monsanto/Bayer is settling more difficult cases and choosing to defend itself at trial against plaintiffs with weaker claims.
