News
Roundup still at risk for litigation
A staff attorney with the National Ag Law Center says Roundup herbicide is still at risk for litigation in parts of the country due to a failure-to-warn claim.
Brigit Rollins says failure-to-warn claims have been a trend in pesticide injury lawsuits in the past few years.
“Under this sort of state common law, a manufacturer of a product has a duty to warn consumers if there is a risk the manufacturer either is aware of or could reasonably foresee.”
An 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, Georgia recently denied a request from Bayer to review a ruling that allowed a doctor to make a failure to warn claim against the company. She says there’s a similar ruling in the 9th Circuit Court.
“Plaintiffs, even if they’re not located in either of those circuits, could point to these cases and say look, at least two other federal circuit courts have concluded these failure to warn claims shouldn’t be pre-empted by federal law. We should hopefully be able to bring our claims in these other circuits as well.”
Rollins says these kinds of lawsuits don’t typically impact how the Environmental Protection Agency reviews or registers pesticides, but they can have an effect if a manufacturer is still likely to sell the product.
“I don’t see any reason to indicate that Bayer is looking to step away from that and in the short-term, I don’t see these decisions having a huge impact on the availability of glyphosate. In the long-term, I think this speaks to more of where the public is at.”
Rollins says she hasn’t seen any indications Bayer would seek an opinion from a federal court that the failure-to-warn claims are pre-empted and it’s unclear if the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in.
Hear the interview.
