Years After Monsanto Deal, Bayer’s Roundup Bills Keep Piling Up

Three years after Bayer agreed to pay $10 billion to settle claims that its weedkiller, Roundup, caused cancer, juries continue to award plaintiffs in additional cases billions of dollars in damages, even as the German drug and chemicals giant insists it will continue its fight in court.

In the past two months, in four separate cases, juries have awarded more than $2 billion in damages to a handful of roughly 50,000 claims that weren’t covered by the 2020 settlement. The $10 billion agreement is one of the largest in history.

Bayer has set aside an additional $6 billion, which the company has said is enough to cover pending lawsuits as well as potential future ones. But analysts and investors worry Bayer could be on the hook for billions more, threatening the 160-year-old company’s future.

Some of the country’s most high profile plaintiffs’ lawyers — including a team that won an estimated $1 billion settlement in 2021 from Johnson & Johnson involving its antipsychotic drug Risperdal — are representing thousands of individuals seeking damages from Bayer. Plaintiffs have at least a dozen cases on court dockets in the coming months.

“Plaintiffs are on a winning streak,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School who studies mass tort actions. The recent cases, Ms. Engstrom said, do not bode well for Bayer because plaintiffs’ lawyers can pull statements from prior testimony and build stronger cases over time. “With each trial, the playing field shifts subtly toward plaintiffs,” she added.

Bayer has said Roundup does not cause cancer. Company executives told The New York Times they will continue litigating cases, and fight to overturn the four recent verdicts or reduce the jury amounts, noting that final awards in previous cases were significantly smaller.