Supreme Court hears Monsanto case 

The Supreme Court today heard arguments in the case in which Monsanto, the maker of the weed killer Roundup, asked the court to throw out a settlement on the grounds that failure-to-warn lawsuits in state courts are preempted by federal law. John Durnell, a Missouri gardener, filed a suit in state court against Monsanto in January 2019, claiming that he developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma from decades of using Roundup and that the company had failed to warn consumers of the chemical’s danger. He won $1.25 million.

Monsanto has agreed to settlements in many previous cases and lawyers say the court’s decision will determine whether other cases stemming from the use of glyphosate and other chemicals will proceed. The Biden administration sided with Durnell, but the Trump administration has sided with Bayer, which now owns Monsanto. “The justices seemed to lean toward restricting the lawsuits, but they asked tough questions of both sides and the outcome remains unclear,” The Washington Post said in an analysis of the hearing. The New York Times and Reuters described the court as split in their analyses. The Environmental Protection Agency has said it has not found glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, to be carcinogenic, but the case is complicated by a scientific journal retracting a study that has been used in determining glyphosate did not pose a cancer risk to humans. A ruling is expected this summer. 

–The Hagstrom Report