A judge has questioned part of a settlement Bayer AG, owner of Monsanto and its Roundup weed killer, had reached with lawsuit lawyers.
Last month Bayer agreed to pay as much as $10.9 billion to settle about 100,000 U.S. lawsuits related to Roundup.
But a judge threatened to throw out the part that ear-marks $1.25 billion to support a separate class agreement to address potential future litigation. That part of the settlement requires court approval.
“The Court is skeptical of the propriety and fairness of the proposed settlement, and is tentatively inclined to deny the motion,” Judge Vince Chhabria said in a filing with the United States District Court, Northern District of California.
Bayer had planned on creating an independent panel of scientific experts to help assess whether glyphosate caused cancer.
Regulators including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Chemicals Agency, have determined glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic, supporting Bayer’s claim that the active ingredient in its Roundup product is safe for agricultural use.
But Chhabria said: “Even with the consent of both sides, it’s questionable whether it would be constitutional (or otherwise lawful) to delegate the function of deciding the general causation question (that is, whether and at what dose Roundup is capable of causing cancer) from judges and juries to a panel of scientists.”
Chhabria also questioned whether potential claimants want to remain bound by a ruling reached by the proposed scientific panel if research is still ongoing.
“In an area where the science may be evolving, how could it be appropriate to lock in a decision from a panel of scientists for all future cases?,” Chhabria wrote in a document released Monday.
I guess it ain't over until it's over.
