Monsanto fired back at what it called “inflammatory rhetoric and mistaken assertions” that it paid a Roundup plaintiff to appeal a favorable ruling on federal preemption.

“These lawyers represent thousands of Roundup plaintiffs, and are evidently concerned that this court might decide the preemption issue in a way that could harm their other cases,” wrote Monsanto’s lawyer, Covington & Burling’s Michael Imbroscio, in an opposition filed Wednesday to a letter submitted last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit by lead plaintiffs counsel in the Roundup multidistrict litigation. “Non-parties do not have a veto right over another plaintiff’s litigation strategy because they would prefer, for their own self-interested reasons, that a federal court of appeals not decide an important question of federal law.”