Less than a month away from what would be the fourth Roundup cancer trial to pit cancer victims against the former agrochemical giant Monsanto Co., lawyers for the opposing sides continue to battle over how, when and where the case should – or should not – be heard.
Lawyers for Monsanto and for its German owner Bayer AG, sent a letter l ast week to the presiding judge in St. Louis County Circuit Court seeking action that would break up the group of plaintiffs into many smaller groups and delay the trial date of Oct. 15 that was previously set for 14 plaintiffs who had been grouped under the case Winston V. Monsanto.
Lead plaintiff Walter Winston and 13 others from around the country were set for trial in St. Louis City Court but Monsanto protested the venue for all the plaintiffs except Winston and after months of battling between the lawyers for both sides, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Michael Mullen transferred all plaintiffs except Winston to St. Louis County in a Sept. 13 order. A Missouri Supreme Court ruling early this year found it was improper for plaintiffs’ attorneys to anchor plaintiffs from outside the area to someone who had proper venue to bring a lawsuit in St. Louis.
Plaintiffs attorneys have been working to keep all 14 plaintiffs together and on track for an Oct. 15 trial, seeking approval for Judge Mullen to take a temporary assignment to the county for the purposes of trying the Roundup case. But Monsanto protested that effort, calling it an “extraordinary proposal” in the company’s Sept. 19 letter to St. Louis County Judge Gloria Clark Reno.
The company said the plaintiffs’ attorneys “have only themselves to blame for the position they are now in. At the time they filed their claims, venue in the City of St. Louis was not proper… The Missouri Supreme Court’s decision… flatly confirmed that conclusion.”
Additionally, Monsanto’s lawyers argued in their letter that any trial should have no more than two plaintiffs: “A joint trial of the disparate claims of thirteen plaintiffs – claims arising under the law of three different states – would inevitably and impermissibly confuse the jury and deprive Monsanto of a fair trial.”
The Winston lawsuit, filed in March of 2018, would be the first trial to take place in the St. Louis area. Two trials that had been set to start in St. Louis in August and September have been delayed.
Before selling to Bayer last year, Monsanto was based in the suburb of Creve Coeur and was one of the largest St. Louis area-based employers. Roundup cancer trials that had been set for St. Louis area in August and September have both already been delayed until next year. The back and forth battling over where and when the Winston trial may or may not take place has been ongoing for more than a year.
The plaintiffs in the Winston case are among more than 18,000 people in the United States suing Monsanto claiming that exposure to the company’s glyphosate-based herbicides caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto hid the risks associated with its weed killers. Three juries in three trials over similar claims have found in favor of plaintiffs and ordered large punitive damages against Monsanto.
Bayer and lawyers for the plaintiffs are engaged in discussions about a potential global settlement of the litigation. Bayer has been dealing with a depressed share price and disgruntled investors ever since the Aug. 10, 2018 jury decision in the first Roundup cancer trial. The jury awarded California groundskeeper Dewayne “Lee” Johnson $289 million and found that Monsanto acted with malice in suppressing information about the risks of its herbicides.
