Legal reform advocates nationwide recognize October as “Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Month.” This year, the U.S. Supreme Court can help highlight and address the scourge of lawsuit abuse by reviewing an astounding $80 million judgment against Bayer subsidiary, Monsanto.
With outrageous multi-million-dollar judgments becoming more commonplace, it’s easy to see how lawsuit abuse wipes out an estimated $435.6 billion in overall economic activity each year.
In 2018, a California jury decided that one of the world’s most popular pesticides, Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, caused cancer. With 29,000 copycat cases still pending (of the 125,000 originally filed), the attack against the glyphosate-based product is on track to become one of history’s biggest and most notorious mass torts – and it’s unfortunately based in junk science.
An ongoing complaint about class actions is that members of the classes get pennies while attorneys get millions. We now know that the investors behind these cases make 95 percent annually on their money.
The Supreme Court must step in and make it clear that these abuses of our civil justice system will not be tolerated. But, if junk science prevails in cases like the mass torts surrounding Roundup, the only real winners will be lawyers and their wealthy financiers.
