Bayer AG’s effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review a key trial loss in the nationwide Roundup litigation inched forward [recently] when the high court said it would include Bayer’s petition for a writ of certiorari in a December 10 conference where the justices will discuss which cases to accept for review.
Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, filed the petition in August, asking the court to review the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision that affirmed the district court’s judgment in Monsanto’s 2019 trial loss to plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. The jury in the case found that exposure to Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide was a cause of Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).
There is no certainty the Supreme Court will agree to take up the case; nor a certainty that there will even be much discussion of the case, but if the court does decide to grant the company’s request, it would shine a national spotlight on the product liability litigation that has seen more than 100,000 plaintiffs sue over allegations Roundup herbicide causes cancer.
Related on the SLP
Supreme Court agrees to review Bayer’s request to block lawsuits claiming federally-approved herbicide glyphosate causes cancer
Roundup litigation reprieve? U.S. government backs Bayer’s claim that its glyphosate is safe-as-used finding preempts random, conflicting state-by-state ‘failure-to-warn’ claims
A favorable Supreme Court decision is widely seen as Bayer’s best hope for putting an end to the Roundup litigation, which has attracted tens of thousands of plaintiffs, all alleging they developed NHL due to exposure to Monsanto’s herbicides.
