Roundup and Glyphosate Litigation: Verdicts, Settlements and Where It Stands
Roundup, the glyphosate-based weedkiller Monsanto brought to market in 1974 and Bayer acquired in 2018, has produced one of the largest mass tort dockets in American civil litigation. This page tracks the litigation from the first bellwether verdicts through the settlement programme and the appellate fights that followed.
How the litigation began
In March 2015 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” That classification became the scientific spine of the plaintiffs’ case: claimants alleged that sustained occupational exposure caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Monsanto had failed to warn.
The bellwether verdicts
Three trials set the tone. A San Francisco jury found for groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson in 2018. A federal jury found for Edwin Hardeman in 2019. A California jury returned a verdict for Alva and Alberta Pilliod the same year. Each award was later reduced on post-trial motion or appeal, but the pattern of liability findings held, and the reductions did not disturb the underlying verdicts.
The settlement programme
In June 2020 Bayer announced an agreement to resolve a large share of the pending claims, with figures reported around $10 billion covering roughly three-quarters of the docket at the time. The programme did not proceed smoothly. The mechanism proposed for handling future claims — plaintiffs not yet diagnosed — drew judicial scepticism and was withdrawn and reworked.
Regulatory track
The EPA’s interim registration review decision reaffirming glyphosate’s registration was challenged in the Ninth Circuit, and the agency’s position on the cancer question has repeatedly diverged from IARC’s. That divergence has itself become a contested issue in the litigation, particularly on preemption.
Where it stands
Roundup remains active litigation. Claims continue to be filed, appellate questions about federal preemption of state failure-to-warn claims remain live, and the settlement programme continues to process claims alongside cases that opted out.
