Bayer's $7.25 billion proposed Roundup settlement faces first signs of pushback in court

By Diana Novak Jones

Feb 25 (Reuters) - Law firms representing nearly 20,000 people who sued Bayer over alleged injuries from its Roundup weedkiller urged a Missouri judge to delay reviewing the German company’s proposed $7.25 billion nationwide settlement, arguing that rushing would violate the rights of cancer patients and their families.

In a filing in a state court in St. Louis that was made public on Wednesday, the firms said the accord should not be fast-tracked for possible preliminary approval on March 4, just 15 days after the proposed settlement was announced.

The request is the first major organized pushback against Bayer’s BAYGn.DE attempt to resolve most of the 65,000 remaining Roundup claims in state and federal courts.

In a statement, a company spokesperson said Bayer remained confident that the proposed settlement was "fair to all claimants, and warrants approval by the court."

"We fully expect a robust debate about the class settlement and are not surprised by either the support or opposition from plaintiff firms over recent days," the spokesperson said.

A NATIONWIDE SETTLEMENT

Plaintiffs say that Roundup's active ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer, and they developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and other forms of the disease after using the weedkiller at home or on the job.

Bayer acquired Roundup as part of its $63 billion purchase of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018. It has said decades of studies have shown Roundup and glyphosate are safe and do not cause cancer.

The German company announced on February 17 that it had negotiated with a group of plaintiffs' attorneys to strike a nationwide settlement resolving nearly all the Roundup lawsuits it is facing by creating a new class action covering claims across the country.

The settlement would establish a program to pay claimants over 21 years, allowing not only people with existing claims to participate but those who were exposed to the pesticide before the deal was struck and diagnosed with cancer in the future.

In the filing on Wednesday, the law firms asking for the delay said they first received the more than 600-page settlement package the day it was announced, and cannot effectively analyze it quickly. In contrast, they said Bayer and the firms it negotiated with spent two years putting the deal together.

Bayer said the settlement would achieve “legal certainty" by ending years of costly litigation over Roundup while compensating current and future cancer claimants.

COMPANY EXPECTS MAJORITY TO PARTICIPATE

The deal, which requires a judge's approval, does not require Bayer to admit liability or wrongdoing, and the company can back out if too many plaintiffs decline to participate.

Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson said on a call with investors last week that the company requires the “vast majority” of the plaintiffs to participate, and he expects that will happen.

The law firms behind Wednesday's filing said a judge's initial approval of the settlement would trigger a broad stay of all Roundup litigation, including cases stretching back nearly a decade, and unfairly prejudice sick plaintiffs who have waited long enough to go to trial.

They also questioned whether the settlement treats plaintiffs fairly. They asked for a delay of the approval hearing by at least 60 days to review the terms.

A group of plaintiffs' attorneys who negotiated the deal with Bayer said in a statement on Wednesday that they hope the court will not delay the preliminary approval hearing.

The lawyers seeking to delay the settlement "are hopefully working as hard to communicate its terms to their clients as they are trying to delay compensation for the tens of thousands of Roundup victims who have waited a decade for justice," they said in the statement.

Some lawyers representing Roundup plaintiffs who were not part of the settlement negotiations have also expressed support for the deal.

St. Louis City Circuit Court Judge Timothy Boyer, who is overseeing the class action, has not yet scheduled a hearing in the case.