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Container with Roundup in the USA
Photo: Haven Daley / dpa
Since buying Monsanto, Bayer lawyers have spent a lot of time in US courts.
The focus: the Monsanto remedy Roundup, which can be used against weeds - but is also associated with cancer due to the glyphosate it contains.
Now the German chemical company is getting out of a US settlement procedure for possible future plaintiffs and wants to review the sale of Roundup to US private customers.
The company announced on Thursday night shortly after a federal judge in San Francisco rejected the proposal for an agreement between Bayer and plaintiffs' attorneys.
"The decision makes it impossible to further develop the proposed national solution mechanism under the supervision of this court, which would have been the fairest and most efficient solution for all parties," said Bayer.
Instead, the group presented a “five-point plan for effectively dealing with potential future glyphosate lawsuits”.
This includes both "legal and commercial steps that serve to deal with the risks from the legal complex in a way that is comparable to the solution mechanism proposed so far."
Bayer also announced that it will be reviewing its range of glyphosate-containing herbicides such as Roundup for US private customers.
The Leverkusen-based group explained that “the future of glyphosate-based products in this market will be discussed immediately with partners.
"These discussions do not concern the availability of glyphosate-based products for professional users and agriculture."
Judge calls proposal "unreasonable"
Bayer wants to settle the legal disputes over a possible carcinogenic effect of Roundup with compensation payments totaling around eleven billion dollars.
About $ 9 billion of this is earmarked for around 125,000 plaintiffs whose lawsuits have already been filed or are in preparation.
Two billion dollars are earmarked for possible future lawsuits.
However, federal judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco rejected the proposed solution for these future lawsuits on Wednesday.
The agreement is simply "unreasonable" for possible future cancer patients.
The agreement would "achieve a lot" for Bayer subsidiary Monsanto, which manufactures Roundup, the judge wrote in his decision.
"It would do a lot less for Roundup users who have not yet been diagnosed with (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) NHL."
Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for around 54 billion euros.
The dispute over the Roundup weed killer is a legal and financial burden for the Leverkusen group to this day.
How dangerous is it really?
Bayer has been sentenced to high compensation payments in three cancer lawsuits in the USA after using Roundup.
It was not until mid-May that a federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld a conviction of the company to pay around 25 million dollars in damages to a plaintiff suffering from cancer.
The group denies that the weed killer is carcinogenic.
The question is controversial in research.
The US environmental protection agency EPA and also the regulatory authorities in the EU and Germany have come to the conclusion that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk.
In contrast, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared in 2015 that glyphosate is "likely to be carcinogenic in humans".
jok / AFP
