Articles Tagged with Bayer

The US Supreme Court to Hear Important Roundup Case

Published on: January 19, 2026 | By Clay Hodges

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could fundamentally reshape one of the largest mass-tort litigations in American history: the lawsuits alleging that Roundup, the widely used weed-killer, causes cancer.

Roundup has been on the market since the 1970s and became a staple of modern agriculture and home gardening. Its active ingredient, glyphosate, has also been the subject of decades of scientific debate. While some laboratory animal studies and limited human data have suggested a link between glyphosate exposure and certain cancers—most notably non-Hodgkin lymphoma—regulators, including the Environmental Protection Agency, have consistently concluded that the product is safe when used as directed.

That regulatory backdrop sits at the heart of the legal question now before the Court. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018 and inherited its litigation exposure, argues that federal pesticide law preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims. In plain terms, Bayer’s position is that because the EPA controls pesticide labeling nationwide and has approved Roundup’s label, the company should not be subject to liability under state law for failing to include warnings that federal regulators have declined to require.

Jury Awards $2 Billion to Roundup Users Diagnosed With Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

Published on: May 23, 2019 | By Clay Hodges

The makers of Roundup just lost another big case, this time involving a couple who used the weedkiller and were later diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This month, a jury in California awarded Alva and Alberta Pilliod more than two billion dollars. The jury found that Monsanto and Bayer acted negligently and failed to warn the plaintiffs of the dangers of using Roundup. The key active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, has been shown in studies to increase the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The jury then awarded Mr. Pilliod $18 million in “compensatory damages,” which is a money award for actual injuries suffered. The jury awarded Ms. Pilliod $37 million in compensatory damages, for a total of $55 million in compensatory damages. Finally, the jury awarded the Pilliods $1 billion each in punitive damages. The final jury award was $2,055,000,000. A truly astonishing number, and a major rebuke to the makers of Roundup.

The Pilliods testified that they used Roundup on their property for more than thirty years, from 1975 and 2011. They were diagnosed with NHL in 2011 and 2015.

Punitive damages play an important role in consumer protection. Punitives are awarded by a jury to punish or deter a bad-acting company, and similarly situated companies, from engaging in similarly awful conduct. Punitive damages are not common, and are usually awarded when a jury decides that the defendants had prior knowledge of a serious issue or problem and ignored this knowledge to the serious injury or detriment of other people.

Essure Birth Control Device: A History of Pain, Injuries, Lawsuits

Published on: August 15, 2018 | By Clay Hodges

Bayer’s Essure birth control device is coming off the market, thanks to a public campaign aimed at raising awareness about its dangers. After years of silence, in which women were told that their pain wasn’t real, and years of incident reports that went unheeded, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally agreed that Bayer needed to do more to warn patients about the risks of the birth control device.

Now that women are making informed decisions, use of the birth control device has dropped off so precipitously that Bayer is ending its production. Let’s look at what Essure is and why it’s so dangerous.

The Essure Birth Control Implant

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