Roundup MDL Judge Clears General Causation Phase

Roundup MDL Judge Clears General Causation Phase

Introduction

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria presiding over the Roundup multidistrict litigation supported the claims by plaintiffs that Monsanto's weed killer is carcinogenic and rejected the company's plea to grant a summary judgment. The matter came in a 68-page ruling issued on July 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California concluding the Daubert hearings on general causation.

Judge Chhabria had ordered a two-phase trial for Monsanto, beginning with a "general causation phase" to allow plaintiffs a chance to prove that glyphosate in Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in humans. The MDL judge stated that the testimony presented by the three experts were "shaky" yet "admissible". The decision permits plaintiffs to move forward to the next phase of the trial where individual plaintiffs need to prove that glyphosate was the cause of their NHL. Monsanto Co. failed in the attempt to knock out about 400 federal lawsuits filed against them over cancer claims. The company continues to maintain that glyphosate in their product is not the reason for anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer.

About 2,200 lawsuits are pending in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which are consolidated as a multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741 in Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation) under Judge Vince Chhabria. The first trial in the Roundup litigation is underway in the Superior Court of San Francisco for Dewayne Johnson who was diagnosed with NHL four years ago.

An Indiana man filed a similar lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri alleging that the Roundup resulted in his diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL). The manufacturers deliberately withhold the information of carcinogenic side effects of Roundup. The company's carelessness has resulted in multiple deaths due to its product across the United States.