Bayer announced today that it will pay between $10.1 billion and $10.9 billion to resolve current and potential future Roundup litigation.
"The decision to settle the Roundup litigation is the right action at the right time for Bayer," the company said in a statement. "The resolution allows us to fully focus on our business priorities. With the massive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society, serving our customers as a leading company in the life science areas of health and nutrition is more important than ever as we work toward our vision of ‘Health for all, Hunger for none.'"
The main feature of the settlement is resolution of approximately 75 percent of the current Roundup litigation involving approximately 125,000 filed and unfiled claims overall, Bayer says.
Resolved claims include all plaintiff law firms leading the Roundup federal multi-district litigation or the California bellwether cases, and those representing approximately 95 percent of the cases currently set for trial, and establish key values and parameters to guide the resolution of the remainder of the claims as negotiations advance.
The resolution also puts in place a mechanism to resolve potential future claims. The company will make a payment of $8.8 billion to $9.6 billion to resolve the current Roundup litigation, including an allowance expected to cover unresolved claims, and $1.25 billion to support a separate class agreement to address potential future litigation.
The Roundup class agreement will be subject to approval by District Judge Vince Chhabria at the Northern District of California.
The resolutions were approved unanimously by Bayer’s Board of Management and Supervisory Board with input from its Special Litigation Committee, according to the company. The agreements contain no admission of liability or wrongdoing, according to a company statement.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann said the series of settlements are "financially reasonable when viewed against the significant financial risks of continued, multi-year litigation and the related impacts to our reputation and to our business.
"The decision to resolve the Roundup litigation enables us to focus fully on the critical supply of healthcare and food. It will also return the conversation about the safety and utility of glyphosate-based herbicides to the scientific and regulatory arena and to the full body of science.”
Bayer has lost three trials so far in which jurors have sided with plaintiff experts to find that Roundup causes cancer, despite a nearly universal conclusion by regulatory agencies around the world that it does not.
According to the company, it will also resolve dicamba drift litigation for payment of up to $400 million and most PCB water litigation exposure for payment of approximately $820 million.