Roundup Maker to Pay $10 Billion to Settle Cancer Suits

Bayer, the world’s largest seed and pesticide maker, has agreed to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims in the United States that its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, the company said Wednesday.

June 24, 2020 | Source: The New York Times | by Patricia Cohen

Bayer faced tens of thousands of claims linking the weedkiller to cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Some of the money is set aside for future cases.

Bayer, the world’s largest seed and pesticide maker, has agreed to pay more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims in the United States that its popular weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, the company said Wednesday.

The figure includes $1.25 billion to deal with potential future claims from people who used Roundup and may develop the form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the years to come.

“It’s rare that we see a consensual settlement with that many zeros on it,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford University Law School.

Bayer, a German company, inherited the legal morass when it bought Roundup’s manufacturer, Monsanto, for $63 billion in June 2018. It has repeatedly maintained that Roundup is safe and will continue to sell the product without adding a warning on the label.