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WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
WRANGLING ROUNDUP - Bayer AG would very much like the U.S. Supreme Court to make the Roundup litigation go away. Please and thank you. As Law.com’s Amanda Bronstad reports, the company, which is in the midst of negotiating settlements of existing Roundup lawsuits, filed its anticipated petition before SCOTUS yesterday in hopes of obtaining a ruling that could cap future litigation over the pesticide. Monday’s petition, filed by former U.S. Solicitor General and current Wilmer Cutler partner Seth Waxman, is a key part of Bayer’s strategy to resolving thousands of claims over Roundup, which remains on store shelves without a warning on the product label that the pesticide could cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. As it has argued in lower courts, Bayer insists that the plaintiffs’ claims that its Monsanto unit failed to warn of Roundup’s health risks are preempted under federal law. The petition also challenges U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria’s admission of plaintiffs’ experts in the underlying case, which is the only federal Roundup verdict and the first bellwether case from among 3,800 cases in multidistrict litigation in the Northern District of California.
