ST. LOUIS — Bayer has expressed optimism about the pace of settlements over Roundup cancer lawsuits, but it has only a month to meet a federal judge's Nov. 2 deadline.
The German pharmaceuticals company has finalized 44,000 of the 125,000 cases, and U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, who is overseeing about 1,000 unresolved cases, has said he will move at full speed to set trials once the deadline passes.
The Nov. 2 date, reaffirmed by the judge last week, means cases in federal court will no longer be on hold for negotiations. It doesn’t apply to state court suits, which comprise the vast majority of Roundup cases.
Two Roundup trials, both in California, resulted in verdicts of $289 million and $2 billion, amounts that were later reduced.
Ken Feinberg, the court-appointed mediator overseeing settlement negotiations, told Chhabria last week that he’s confident it won’t be necessary to send any federal cases to trial. “They will be settled,” he said.
Lawyers for Bayer and the plaintiffs told the judge Sept. 24 that they are continuing to resolve thousands more cases as part of the $10.9 billion deal it announced in June to end the litigation. Earlier this month Bayer announced it had 15,000 more deals.
Bayer extended the contract earlier this month of CEO Werner Baumann until 2024, considered a show of support for the progress of settlements
Bayer, which acquired Roundup with its purchase of St. Louis-based Monsanto Co. for $63 billion in 2018, has repeatedly denied that Roundup causes cancer, citing the U.S. government declarations about the safety of glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient.
