BAYN Bayer AG

By Sara Randazzo 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (August 28, 2020).

Bayer AG's $10.9 billion settlement to resolve lawsuits over the safety of its Roundup weedkiller is stalling, plaintiffs' attorneys said Thursday in court.

The German chemical and pharmaceutical giant said in June it had reached deals to settle 75% of the 125,000 cases alleging its popular weedkiller causes cancer and was working to tie up the rest. Shareholders welcomed the news after three California juries returned massive awards against the company in Roundup trials. Bayer says Roundup is safe and doesn't cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Deals with some of the lead plaintiffs' lawyers, Aimee Wagstaff and Jennifer Moore, still haven't been signed by Bayer, the lawyers told a judge at a Thursday hearing. Another agreement to resolve a large batch of cases was terminated altogether earlier this month, plaintiffs' lawyer Brent Wisner said.

The three firms collectively represent around 20,000 plaintiffs, according to Ms. Wagstaff.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, who is overseeing thousands of the cases filed in federal court, told the lawyers he wanted to see a plan to restart the litigation in light of the settlement uncertainty. Ms. Wagstaff said her firm was already working to schedule trials in Missouri state court.

"I guess I'm having a little bit of trouble squaring what I read in Bayer's press release in June with the numbers you're giving me right now," Judge Chhabria said, after hearing that the majority of cases in his court still didn't have signed settlement deals.

William Hoffman, an attorney for Bayer, said the company thought at the time of the announcement that it would be able to finalize the agreements. "I think what we have here is something that occurs in a lot of negotiations: a speed bump, a slight hiccup, a change in circumstance that has led one party to put things on hold temporarily," he said.

"So the cases are not resolved, is what you're saying?" Judge Chhabria later said.

Settlement agreements have been finalized with lawyers representing around 30,000 plaintiffs, mediator Kenneth Feinberg told the court.

Specifics of the disagreements weren't discussed Thursday, but Judge Chhabria told the plaintiffs' lawyers to publicly file portions of letters they had sent him in confidence detailing what the judge described as Bayer "welching" on its deals.

Thursday's hearing was another setback for Bayer. The company is already working to revamp another component of its June deal: a $1.25 billion proposal to resolve any Roundup cases filed in the future. The company is redoing that proposed class action after Judge Chhabria indicated he was unlikely to approve it.

Judge Chhabria's blessing isn't required to settle the existing cases, which Bayer said would cost between $8.8 billion and $9.6 billion, but he made clear Thursday he was willing to bring more cases to trial if needed.

Bayer said Thursday it was optimistic it could finalize the settlements in the next 30 days without restarting litigation.

Bayer inherited the Roundup litigation when it bought seed and pesticide maker Monsanto Co. for $63 billion in 2018.

Monsanto first faced scrutiny over Roundup when the product's key ingredient, glyphosate, was labeled as having the potential to cause cancer in 2015 by a division of the World Health Organization. Bayer has argued that glyphosate is safe and approved for use by regulators including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and that it never hid alleged dangers from the public.

Bayer recently lost an appeal in the first Roundup case to go to trial, though the damages awarded to the plaintiff, groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, were greatly reduced to $20.4 million.

Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 28, 2020 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.