Lowe’s Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Selling Roundup

Lowe’s Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Selling Roundup

Introduction

On August 6, 2019, a class-action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California alleging that Lowe's Home Centers failed to warn customers about known Roundup health risks and other side effects linked to the glyphosate weed killer.

The complaint filed by the plaintiff named Lowe’s Home Centers and other 100 companies as defendants. The lawsuit seeks class-action to pursue damages for all buyers of Roundup products in California.

According to the class action, it was the defendant’s duty to inform customers about the risks linked with the widely marketed weedkiller but failed to do so at its retail locations. The lawsuit indicated that the named defendants were provided with a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) by the manufacturer Bayer AG, which specified the known risks. SDS warned that the inhalation and skin contact is likely routes of exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller.

Earlier this month in Missouri, Bayer's motion to delay a Roundup lawsuit, scheduled to go to trial in St. Louis Circuit Court tentatively on October 15, was denied by Judge Michael Mullen last week. Judge Mullen said that the depositions and discovery should be continued till September 16 and the jury selection process will begin by October 10.

Bayer is facing more than 18,000 Roundup lawsuits consolidated under federal multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation) in the Northern District of California, presided by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.

Lowe’s Home Centers failed to instruct its users on the usage of herbicides from a safety perspective. The packaging of Roundup only states moderate eye irritation. The consumers would have opted out from purchasing Roundup. 

Until now 17 countries have put a restriction on the usage of Roundup. This past July Los Angeles County stated that they would stop the use of glyphosate-based herbicides in their property due to the fear of the development of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

As per the CBS News report, Bayer is ready to settle 18,000 pending Roundup claims amounting to $8M. However, no such offer has been made by Bayer yet. To date, Bayer has been unsuccessful in three Roundup lawsuits where juries have awarded judgment favoring plaintiffs who have been diagnosed with cancer due to the use of the herbicide. 

Roundup herbicide was once considered the best gift for agricultural fields. It ruled the market right from the mid-70s until 2013, when some shocking hidden facts were unveiled about this product. 

In March 2013 an email sent by a senior toxicologist from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to her colleague mentioned the carcinogenic attributes of Roundup herbicide, which were not disclosed to the public due to Monsanto’s strong control over EPA. 

Finally, in the year 2015, World Health Organization (WHO) declared that there was a linkage between glyphosate and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other types of cancer. Roundup herbicide was labeled as a category 2A- product by the IARC, which means it is probably carcinogenic.