In a filing in a state court in St. Louis that was made public on Wednesday, the firms said the accord should not be fast-tracked for possible preliminary approval on March 4, just 15 days after the proposed settlement was announced.

The request is the first major organized pushback against Bayer’s attempt to resolve most of the 65,000 remaining Roundup claims in state and federal courts.

In a statement, a company spokesperson said Bayer remained confident that the proposed settlement was “fair to all claimants, and warrants approval by the court.”

“We fully expect a robust debate about the class settlement and are not surprised by either the support or opposition from plaintiff firms over recent days,” the spokesperson said.

A nationwide settlement

Plaintiffs say that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer, and they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of the disease after using the weedkiller at home or on the job.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018. It has said decades of studies have shown Roundup and glyphosate are safe and do not cause cancer.

The German company announced on February 17 that it had negotiated with a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys to strike a nationwide settlement resolving nearly all the Roundup lawsuits it is facing by creating a new class action covering claims across the country.

The settlement would establish a program to pay claimants over 21 years, allowing not only people with existing claims to participate but those who were exposed to the pesticide before the deal was struck and diagnosed with cancer in the future.

In the filing on Wednesday, the law firms asking for the delay said they first received the more than 600-page settlement package the day it was announced, and cannot effectively analyze it quickly. In contrast, they said Bayer and the firms it negotiated with spent two years putting the deal together.

Bayer said the settlement would achieve “legal certainty” by ending years of costly litigation over Roundup while compensating current and future cancer claimants.

Company expects majority to participate

The deal, which requires a judge’s approval, does not require Bayer to admit liability or wrongdoing, and the company can back out if too many plaintiffs decline to participate.

Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson said on a call with investors last week that the company requires the “vast majority” of the plaintiffs to participate, and he expects that will happen.

The law firms behind Wednesday’s filing said a judge’s initial approval of the settlement would trigger a broad stay of all Roundup litigation, including cases stretching back nearly a decade, and unfairly prejudice sick plaintiffs who have waited long enough to go to trial.

They also questioned whether the settlement treats plaintiffs fairly. They asked for a delay of the approval hearing by at least 60 days to review the terms.

A group of plaintiffs’ attorneys who negotiated the deal with Bayer said in a statement on Wednesday that they hope the court will not delay the preliminary approval hearing.

The lawyers seeking to delay the settlement “are hopefully working as hard to communicate its terms to their clients as they are trying to delay compensation for the tens of thousands of Roundup victims who have waited a decade for justice,” they said in the statement.

Some lawyers representing Roundup plaintiffs who were not part of the settlement negotiations have also expressed support for the deal.

St. Louis City Circuit Court Judge Timothy Boyer, who is overseeing the class action, has not yet scheduled a hearing in the case.

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The German company said the proposed nationwide settlement, expected to be filed on Tuesday in state court in St. Louis, Missouri, would establish a long-term claims program funded by capped annual payments over up to 21 years.

The company, which acquired Roundup as part of its purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, is facing claims over Roundup from approximately 65,000 plaintiffs in U.S. state and federal courts.

The plaintiffs say they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using the weedkiller, either at home or on the job.

Proposed settlement aimed at heading off future lawsuits

The proposed settlement covers the bulk of the lawsuits, but will need a judge’s approval.

It is also designed to head off future lawsuits, and includes a provision that allows people who can prove they have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and were exposed to Roundup prior to Tuesday to file claims to receive a portion of the settlement for up to 21 years.

Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said on a call with investors and reporters that he is confident the proposed class action settlement will resolve the vast majority of the claims, although he declined to say how many people currently support the deal.

The company said it had separately reached confidential settlements to resolve other Roundup cases with specific law firms, although the company would not name the firms or specify the amount of those deals.

Company paid out US$10 billion to settle previous suits

Roundup is among the most widely used weedkillers in the United States. Bayer has said decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

The company had previously paid about $10 billion (C$13.6 billion) to settle most of the Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get a settlement then covering future cases.

It has had a mixed record with cases that have gone to trial. It prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but has been hit with large jury awards in the past few years, including a $2.1 billion (C$2.86 billion) verdict in a case in the U.S. state of Georgia in March.

The verdicts shattered both investor confidence and company hopes that the worst of the Roundup litigation was over, and put pressure on Bayer to find a comprehensive solution to the lawsuits.

Supreme Court to hear appeal

Tuesday’s proposed settlement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in a case that Bayer argues will sharply limit its liability in the litigation.

The company said the Supreme Court case, scheduled for oral arguments at the end of April, remains essential to resolving the Roundup litigation.

A favorable ruling would wipe out several large verdicts that remain on appeal and would also prevent future claims from individuals who choose to opt out of the nationwide settlement.

Bayer expects its provisions and litigation liabilities to rise from 7.8 billion euros (C$12.6 billion) to 11.8 billion euros. It anticipates around 5 billion euros in litigation-related payouts in 2026, and now expects negative free cash flow for the year.

The company has postponed publication of its 2025 results and 2026 guidance to March 4 to reflect the agreements.

— Reporting by Diana Novak Jones and Kirsti Knolle; Additional reporting by Dietrich Knauth

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The article was initially published in 2000 in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. A retraction notice, published by Elsevier, the company that oversees the journal, cites undisclosed conflicts of interest, unacknowledged contributions from Monsanto employees and reliance on unpublished Monsanto studies. It concludes that the retraction of the study was necessary to maintain the integrity of the journal.

“The scientific concerns … regarding (ghost-) authorship(s) and potential conflicts of interest, none of which have been responded to, are sufficient to warrant this action,” the retraction authors said.

Health Canada said the withdrawal does not affect its current assessment of glyphosate because the review was only one source among many.

“While this review was previously considered in our assessment, it is important to note that the primary data sources were independently evaluated by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA),” the department said. “Therefore, the retraction of this review does not affect our previous review conclusions.”

The department said its 2017 re-evaluation considered more than 1,300 studies and remains consistent with the most recent 2023 review by European regulators. PMRA will continue monitoring international assessments and new scientific research.

Monsanto, whose internal studies and communications were cited in the retraction notice, was acquired by Bayer in 2018. The company has faced continuing lawsuits over glyphosate products, creating uncertainty about Bayer’s long-term commitment to glyphosate.

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Why it matters: Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup are key crop protection products for Canadian farmers, but they’ve been the object of lawsuits on both sides of the border.

“Unless something changes, we are going to have to stop producing glyphosate … we have to find a solution,” CEO Bill Anderson said in a media call after the release of detailed quarterly results.

The company has previously replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weed-killing substances and it earlier this year threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S. agriculture markets if lawmakers or courts cannot provide more legal relief.

Glyphosate has been approved for safe use by Canadian and U.S. health authorities.

— Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss

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Bayer, which produces the herbicide, said it acknowledged the court’s decision, “which did not find the company liable”.

Why it matters: Bayer has said it could pull glyphosate herbicide Roundup from the U.S. market if authorities strengthen product liability protections. The company has paid some US$10 billion in lawsuit settlements.

Lawyers for the Grataloup family said: “It is clearly a big disappointment for the Grataloup family and for us … The case deserves to be submitted to the appeals court.”

The lawsuit was one of the first high-profile cases centring specifically on prenatal exposure to glyphosate and congenital malformations in a child.

Research has suggested prenatal exposure to glyphosate may affect babies’ health at birth, but successful lawsuits have been rare. Bayer has said the product is safe for human use.

The German pharmaceutical and biotechnology group has paid around $10 billion to settle disputed claims in the United States that its weedkiller Roundup, based on glyphosate, causes cancer.

The European Union last renewed the approval of the use of glyphosate in 2023, through December 2033. The U.S. and Canada have both approved glyphosate for safe use.

— Reporting by Makini Brice

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Beyond Pesticides, Moms Across America and the Organic Consumers Association on Thursday said the settlement calls for General Mills to remove the phrase “Made with 100% Natural Whole Grain Oats” from Nature Valley labels.

Why it matters: Glyphosate, particularly Bayer’s Roundup herbicide, is the center of thousands of lawsuits in North America over claims it causes cancer. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has assessed glyphosate to not pose a cancer risk.

The groups said independent tests showed that the granola bars contained 0.45 parts per million of glyphosate, and that oats were the “most likely” source of the herbicide.

While this was below the maximum 30 parts per million that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends, the groups said General Mills’ label was deceptive and that “no reasonable consumer” would expect the bars to contain anything unnatural.

“Nature Valley is confident in the accuracy of its label,” General Mills spokesman Mike Siemienas said in an email.

He said the Minneapolis-based company settled to avoid the cost and distraction of litigation, and focus on making Nature Valley products “with 100 percent whole grain oats.”

The settlement came 13 days after a San Francisco jury ordered Monsanto Co to pay a school groundskeeper $289 million (C$394.2 million) after he said his exposure to its Roundup weed killer and another glyphosate herbicide caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, has said it would appeal the jury’s verdict.

The General Mills lawsuit was one of many accusing food companies of using deceptive labels, including terms such as “natural” that do not have clearly understood meanings, to induce consumers to buy or pay more for their products.

In July 2017, a Minneapolis federal judge dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit over General Mills’ “100% Natural” label, saying that even if the oats contained traces of glyphosate, “there is no allegation that the oats, themselves, are not natural.”

A subsequent appeal was dismissed.

The consumer groups had sued General Mills two years ago in Superior Court in Washington, D.C.

The Organic Consumers Association sued Unilever Plc in the same court on July 9 over its labeling for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, including a claim over the use of glyphosate.

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Why it matters: Glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup are key crop protection products for Canadian farmers.

Bayer has asked the justices to hear its appeal of a lower court’s decision to uphold a $1.25 million (C$1.71 million) verdict awarded by a St. Louis jury in a case in Missouri state court in which a plaintiff named John Durnell sued after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he attributed to his exposure to Roundup.

The Supreme Court asked the Justice Department for its views on whether the justices should take up the appeal.

Bayer facing more than 67,000 lawsuits

The Missouri Court of Appeals rejected the German pharmaceutical and biotechnology company’s contention that federal law governing pesticides bars lawsuits like Durnell’s making claims under state laws. Bayer is facing more than 67,000 such lawsuits in U.S. state and federal courts. Other federal and state appellate courts have made similar rulings.

Roundup is among the most widely used herbicides in the United States.

Bayer is arguing that consumers should not be able to sue it under state law for failing to warn that Roundup increases cancer risk because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found no such risk and requires no such warning. Bayer argued that federal law does not allow it to add any warning to the product beyond the EPA-approved label.

The company appealed the verdict in Durnell’s case to the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Lawyers for Durnell asked the Supreme Court to turn away Bayer’s appeal. They said the plaintiff relied on Bayer’s advertising and not just the label when he chose to use Roundup, and the company’s marketing failed to warn consumers of the product’s risks.

Bayer may withdraw Roundup

The company has paid about $10 billion to settle most of the Roundup lawsuits that were pending as of 2020, but failed to get a settlement covering future cases. New lawsuits have continued to pour in since then. Plaintiffs have said they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other forms of cancer due to using Roundup, either at home or on the job.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, has said that decades of studies have shown Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, are safe for human use.

The company has had a mixed record at trial in the Roundup lawsuits. Bayer has prevailed in a series of Roundup trials, but it was also hit with large jury awards in the past few years, including a $2.1 billion verdict in a case in the U.S. state of Georgia in March.

Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to consider the Roundup litigation before, but was rebuffed in 2022. Since then, one federal appeals court agreed with the company in a split from other appeals courts.

Bayer has threatened to withdraw Roundup from the U.S. market as it fights the litigation. The company replaced glyphosate in U.S. consumer products with different weedkilling substances.

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The publicity to join the class action began this month.

As an example, McKenzie Lake Lawyers, a firm in London, Ont., says on its website that it’s pursuing a class action lawsuit against Monsanto and Bayer on behalf of Canadians who have had “significant exposure” to glyphosate-based herbicides and have a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Legal wrangling

In December 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice certified a national class action lawsuit against Monsanto and Bayer, alleging that exposure to glyphosate products caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL).

The promotion of the class action was delayed for 16 months because Bayer and the Canadian legal firms were arguing about the definitions and criteria of the class action. In short, they were discussing who is eligible to join the class action and who is not.

Those definitions were sorted out this spring. The law firms can now proceed with public advertising to promote the class action.

Connection with cancer alleged

The lead of the Canadian class action is Jeffrey DeBlock, who is now 47 and lives in Toronto. As a teenager in the early 1990s, he worked on farms for summer jobs, spraying weeds with a backpack sprayer, according to a 2019 statement of claim submitted to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

At the age of 17, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The lawsuit contends that DeBlock developed the disease because of his significant exposure to Roundup, the brand name for Bayer herbicides with glyphosate as the active ingredient.

In an email to the Western Producer, a Bayer spokesperson said the company has “great sympathy for Mr. DeBlock’s medical issues.”

However, they said Bayer is confident glyphosate did not cause his illness.

“Bayer firmly stands behind the safety of glyphosate-based products and will vigorously defend them,” the spokesperson said.

“Our glyphosate products have been used safely and successfully in Canada and internationally for nearly 50 years. Leading health regulators around the world have repeatedly concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and that glyphosate products are safe when used according to label directions.”

Health Canada safety reviews

One of those regulators is Health Canada.

From 2015-19, Health Canada conducted multiple reviews on the safety of the herbicide. A Frequently Asked Questions page on the Health Canada website says the following:

“No pesticide regulatory authority in the world, including Health Canada, considers glyphosate to be a carcinogenic risk of concern to humans.”

Despite those findings, the DeBlock class action has been working its way through Canadian courts since 2019. The certification, in December 2023, means the lawsuit meets the criteria of a class action. It isn’t a decision on the merits of DeBlock’s case.

“In order for an action to proceed as a class action, the court must determine whether it is appropriate for the case to be treated as a class action,” says Koskie Minsky, the Toronto law firm leading the Roundup class action.

The DeBlock case and almost all Roundup lawsuits are founded on a United Nations International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) decision. In March of 2025, it classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

That finding has been rejected by Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which all say that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer.

Bayer spending big money on litigation

Bayer is spending a significant amount of money in legal costs defending the safety of Roundup.

Chief executive officer Bill Anderson told the Wall Street Journal that in some years the German firm spent more on litigation costs related to Roundup than it did on research and development of new agricultural products.

“We barely break even on glyphosate production and distribution,” he said in an April 14 WSJ article.

“If you then factor in litigation, you’re talking US$2 billion to $3 billion in losses a year.”

Bayer has dealt with 114,000 claims regarding the safety of glyphosate, and most of those cases have been resolved or deemed to be ineligible.

However, there are still 67,000 active lawsuits in the United States.

Anderson is determined to get the corporation’s legal costs under control. If that can’t be accomplished, the company might pull the herbicide from the U.S. market.

“We’re pretty much reaching the end of the road…. We’re talking months, not years.”

No decisions made

A spokesperson for Bayer clarified that there is no “timeline” for the availability of glyphosate.

“As of today, no decision has been made about the future of glyphosate for Bayer in the U.S. or Canada, and we do not have a specific timeline,” they said.

“Bayer is focused on critical items this year to contain glyphosate litigation in the U.S. We hope we can find resolution so that we are not forced to stop selling this product.”

As for Canada, the class action is likely years from being in front of a judge who will decide the case.

In an email, Koskie Minsky explained the next legal steps.

“Notice about the certification of the class action will be provided to class members, and class members will have to decide whether they want to remain in the action or opt out. After this stage, the litigation will move on to the discovery phase, which involves exchange of documents … in preparation for trial of the common issues,” it said.

“We are not able to provide estimates of the class size.”

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Bayer said in its petition that consumers should not be able to sue it under state law for failing to warn that Roundup increases cancer risk because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found no such risk and requires no such warning. In fact, it argued, federal law does not allow it to add any warning to the product beyond the EPA-approved label.

Why it matters: Bayer is a major supplier of crop protection products, including Roundup, for Canadian farmers

The company tried to make that case to the Supreme Court and was rebuffed in 2022, but a federal appeals court has since agreed with the company in a split from other appeals courts. The Supreme Court is generally more likely to take cases where federal appeals courts are divided.

A Supreme Court victory for Bayer would likely make it much more difficult for the lawsuits to continue, though it is not clear whether it would eliminate them entirely.

Friday’s petition came in the case of John Durnell, who in 2023 won a $1.25-million verdict in a St. Louis, Missouri state court. Bayer has been hit with much larger verdicts over Roundup, most recently a $2.1-billion award last month to a plaintiff in Georgia.

The company has paid about $10 billion to settle claims that Roundup, based on the herbicide glyphosate, causes cancer. About 67,000 further cases are pending, for which the group has set aside $5.9 billion in legal provisions.

CEO Bill Anderson has struggled to revive a share price that has plunged by more than 70 per cent since Bayer’s $63-billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018 that saddled it with costly litigation and debt.

The company’s problems include the glyphosate litigation, a 2023 development setback for its most promising experimental medicine, weak agriculture markets and pressure from some investors to separate or sell businesses. Bayer plans to seek shareholder approval to raise equity capital worth close to 35 per cent of its outstanding shares over the next three years to cover possible costs of U.S. litigation.

The company has warned U.S. lawmakers it could stop selling Roundup, which is widely used by U.S. farmers, unless they can strengthen legal protection against the litigation. It has already replaced glyphosate with other ingredients in the home consumer version of Roundup.

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Why it matters: Bayer is a major supplier of crop protection products, including Roundup, for Canadian farmers

The verdict, which Bayer said on Saturday it would appeal, is one of the largest legal settlements issued in a Roundup-related case and is the latest setback for the group, among the world’s largest seeds and pesticides makers.

Bayer has paid about $10 billion to settle disputed claims that Roundup, based on the herbicide glyphosate, causes cancer. Over 60,000 further cases are pending for which the group has set aside $5.9 billion in legal provisions.

The German pharmaceutical and biotechnology group acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion takeover of U.S. agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018.

The Georgia verdict includes $65 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, according to a statement emailed to Reuters by the plaintiff’s law firms Arnold & Itkin LLP and Kline & Specter PC.

Bayer said in a statement it disagreed with the jury’s verdict, as it conflicted with the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence and the consensus of regulatory bodies and their scientific assessments worldwide.

“We believe that we have strong arguments on appeal to get this verdict overturned and the excessive and unconstitutional damage awards eliminated or reduced,” it said.

It said that damages in cases that have reached final judgements have been reduced 90 per cent overall compared with the original jury awards.

Earlier this month, Bayer told U.S. lawmakers it could stop selling Roundup unless they strengthened legal protection against product liability litigation, a financial analyst and person close to the matter told Reuters.

— Reporting by Riham Alkousaa

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