Vince Chhabria | cand.uscourts.gov
SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - Plaintiff lawyers leading multidistrict litigation against Bayer AG over its Roundup herbicide are scheduled to face off against dissident lawyers in federal court in California tomorrow as a judge hears arguments for and against an 8.5% “common benefit” fee that opponents call an $800 million “money grab.”
The fees would come off the top of the nearly $11 billion Bayer has offered to settle thousands of lawsuits claiming Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a common cancer of the lymphatic system. Both Bayer and regulators in the U.S. and most other countries consider Roundup and its main ingredient, glyphosate, to be safe, but plaintiff lawyers in the U.S. have won several large court victories based on testimony of their own experts who maintain glyphosate causes cancer.