(Reuters) – Bayer has won a legal victory in its fight to limit liability from claims that its Roundup weedkiller caused cancer, as a U.S. appeals court on Thursday said federal law protects the German company from a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania landscaper.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected plaintiff David Schaffner’s claim that Bayer’s Monsanto unit violated state law by not putting a cancer warning on Roundup’s label.
Mr. Schaffner was diagnosed in 2006 with a cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a common claim for Roundup plaintiffs.
He and his wife, Theresa, sued Bayer in 2019, alleging in part that his illness had affected their relationship.
Chief Judge Michael Chagares wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel that the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act requires nationwide uniformity in pesticide labels, and he blocked Pennsylvania from adding the cancer warning.
Baer said the decision contrasts with rulings by federal appeals courts in similar cases in San Francisco and Atlanta.
That could raise the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene to resolve the split, and possibly reduce Bayer’s liabilities.
Shoffner’s attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Baer said he was pleased with the decision and that the Supreme Court “should resolve this important issue of law.”
It has said that Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are safe, and said it “fully stands” behind the brand.
Bayer has faced extensive litigation over Roundup, and has seen its stock price fall more than 73% since it purchased Monsanto for $63 billion in June 2018.
The company settled most of the Roundup lawsuits in 2020 for $10.9 billion, but still faces about 58,000 claims. Another 114,000 claims have been settled or deemed ineligible.
Although Bayer had won 14 of the 23 Roundup trials by July 23, one victory was overturned on appeal, and the loss required it to pay millions of dollars in damages.
Schaffner reached a settlement with Bayer in September 2022, on the condition that Bayer would be unable to convince the courts that federal law prevents Pennsylvania from providing cancer warnings.
Judge Chagares held that it did, and that this approach “best achieves Congress’s stated objective of uniformity in pesticide labeling.”
Roundup is one of the most widely used weed killers in the United States. Bayer stopped selling it for household use last year.
this is the matter Schaffner et al. v. Monsanto Corp.3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
