WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT: The U.S. Supreme Court could decide as soon as Monday if it will hear Bayer’s (OTC: BAYRY) request to dismiss claims that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer. The company wants to avoid potentially billions of dollars more in damage and payouts.
Bayer wants the decision of an appeals court to uphold the $25 million in damages given to Edwin Hardeman, a Californian who used the weedkiller Roundup and said it caused his cancer, to be looked at again.
How the court acts will affect whether or not thousands of other cases like this one go forward.
The court docket said that the nine justices would meet in private on Thursday to decide whether or not to hear the case. The court is supposed to decide on pending appeals on Monday morning, but sometimes a case is put off for different reasons, like if the justices don’t feel like hearing it.
Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to rule that because the Environmental Protection Agency approved Roundup’s label at the federal level, the lawsuit could not be brought under California’s state law.
The court’s decision will come after the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden asked the justices to reject the petition last month. This was the opposite of what the administration of Republican former President Donald Trump did, which mostly supported Bayer.
The company’s shares fell more than 6% that day, but they have gone back up since then. Bayer is preparing for up to $4.5 billion in extra legal costs from the other claims if the court doesn’t agree with them.
It set aside money for this purpose last year, even though it had already spent a lot of the $11.6 billion it had set aside for settlements and lawsuits over the matter.
The Supreme Court doesn’t have to take the advice of the U.S. government, but it usually does. The solicitor general, the top Supreme Court lawyer for the government, is called the “tenth justice” because of this.
Analysts from Credit Suisse said Thursday that they don’t think the case will be heard, citing the position of the Biden administration and the fact that the highest court in the United States accepts less than 1% of cases that are brought to it.
Bayer has lost three trials and had to pay tens of millions of dollars to people who used Roundup, but it has also won three. On Friday, it said that it had won in Missouri. It said earlier this year that out of about 138,000 cases, 107,000 had been solved.
Bayer also makes aspirin, Yasmin birth control pills, and the drug Xarelto, which is used to prevent strokes. The company has said that the cancer claims go against good science and the fact that regulators in the US and around the world have repeatedly given their approval for the products.
It has said that it shouldn’t be punished for selling a product on which the U.S. agency in charge of protecting the environment wouldn’t let a cancer warning be printed.
MONSANTO PURCHASE
Since Bayer bought the Roundup brand as part of its $63 billion purchase of agricultural seeds and pesticide maker Monsanto (NYSE:MON) in 2018, it has been sued over Roundup.
In June 2020, Bayer and the plaintiffs reached a settlement agreement in principle, but they were unable to get the court to approve a separate agreement about how to handle future cases.
Even if the Supreme Court doesn’t care, the company says it is ready to “move on and put the uncertainty behind us.” It is taking steps to limit the risk of more lawsuits.
It plans to offer cancer patients who might sue Bayer in the future the chance to join a programme that would pay claimants who meet certain criteria and don’t want to be represented by a plaintiff attorney. The money for this programme has already been set aside.
Bayer plans to replace glyphosate with other active ingredients in weedkillers for home gardeners in the US. This is to stop more lawsuits from being filed.
The highest court in the United States is now looking at another case involving Bayer. This is because the company asked the court in March to overturn a decision from a California state appeals court last year that upheld a $86 million cancer verdict against Bayer.
In this case, Bayer also brings up a new legal question about the punitive damages, which it says are too high and not fair because it followed the law.
