Roundup Settlement Talks Delayed Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Roundup Settlement Talks Delayed Amid COVID-19 Crisis

Introduction

Bayer AG said that the coronavirus pandemic is slowing down the settlements talks over thousands of plaintiffs who claim that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.

The company recently applied a right to terminate a draft settlement agreement, that it had reached with a group of firms and extended the negotiations through April. Bayer AG’s CEO Werner Baumann, and Kenneth Feinberg, the mediator appointed to lead the settlement talks, both acknowledged the delay.

Bayer recently agreed to pay nearly $40 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming misleading and false advertisements over its weedkiller.

Bayer is now facing more than 40,000 Roundup lawsuits consolidated under MDL No. 2741 presided by the U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California.

Bayer has agreed to pay nearly $40 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming misleading and false advertisements over its controversial weed killer Roundup.

According to the lawsuit filed by several plaintiffs in Missouri federal court in February 2019, Scotts Miracle-Gro Products, Inc. and Monsanto Company, now owned by Bayer, face allegations that the manufacturers falsely claimed that the active ingredient, glyphosate, only targets an enzyme that is not found in humans or pets.

Monsanto, Bayer’s subsidiary, has agreed to pay $39.5 million as part of the Roundup class action settlement. The manufacturer also agreed to remove language from Roundup Weed and Grass Killer labels, which previously indicated glyphosate only affects plant enzymes.

Currently, Bayer faces many lawsuits over its Roundup weed killer, but this case is different from thousands of cases faced by the manufacturer over allegations that long-term exposure of glyphosate causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other injuries to the users of Roundup.

Many state court cases have already been postponed following a settlement discussion between the parties and the prominent mediator Ken Feinberg