WASHINGTON \u00a0\u2014\u00a0The Supreme Court announced Friday it will hear Monsanto\u2019s claim that it should be shielded from tens of thousands of lawsuits over its weed killer Roundup because the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a warning label that it may cause cancer.<\/p>\n
The justices will not resolve the decades-long dispute over whether Roundup\u2019s key ingredient, glyphosate,<\/a> causes cancer. <\/p>\n Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans. <\/p>\n However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims<\/a> from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis. <\/p>\n The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.<\/p>\n In product liability suits, plaintiffs typically seek to hold product makers responsible for failing to warn them of a known danger. <\/p>\n John Durnell, a Missouri man, said he sprayed Roundup for years to control weeds without gloves or a mask, believing it was safe. He sued after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma.<\/p>\n In 2023, a jury rejected his claim the product was defective but it ruled for him on his \u201cstrict liability failure to warn claim,\u201d a state court concluded. He was awarded $1.25 million in damages. <\/p>\n Monsanto appealed, arguing this state law verdict is in conflict with federal law regulating pesticides.<\/p>\n \u201cEPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world\u2019s most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades,\u201d the company told the court<\/a> in its appeal. <\/p>\n They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be \u201cmisbranded\u201d with such a warning. <\/p>\n Nonetheless, the \u201cpremise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n