German chemicals giant Bayer has asked the US Supreme Court to intervene in its long-running legal dispute over its weedkiller Roundup, The Guardian wrote citing an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.
It was the third time Bayer had appealed to the USA’s leading court and the first since Bill Anderson joined the group as CEO in 2023, the 6 April report said.
The company has faced lawsuits linked to Roundup since it acquired the brand from US agrochemical group Monsanto in 2018.
Claimants have alleged that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer but Bayer says scientific studies and regulatory approvals have shown that the weedkiller is safe.
In 2022, the Supreme Court rejected two previous attempts by Bayer to review rulings by Californian courts that went against the company, the report said.The company’s latest bid came days after the supreme court of the US state of Missouri refused to review a ruling against Bayer, opening the way to an appeal at the federal level, the group was quoted as saying.
In a court filing, Bayer said the federally-approved label for Roundup included no warning of cancer, therefore prohibiting failure-to-warn lawsuits brought under state laws, the Associated Press (AP) wrote on 7 April.
Bayer was quoted as saying that “tens of thousands” of claims were waiting to be heard in US courts and that a ruling in its favour could “largely curtail this litigation”.
To date, Bayer had spent more than US$10bn settling suits alleging that it had failed to disclose that Roundup caused cancer, The Guardian report said.
It has set aside US$16bn to settle further cases, according to AP.
