A bottle of Bayer AG Roundup brand weedkiller is arranged for a photograph in a garden shed in Princeton, Illinois, U.S., on Thursday, March 28, 2019. (Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg) 
A three-judge panel in Philadelphia concluded on Thursday that federal regulations governing the pesticide’s warning label supersede Pennsylvania laws under which a Roundup user in the state claimed Bayer’s Monsanto unit should have warned them about cancer risks. The majority of the current cases against the company are in state courts.
Over the past year, state court juries have hit Bayer with billions of dollars in damages over Monsanto’s mishandling of the product. The decision — if it holds up under further appeals — may make it easier for Bayer to overcome thousands of lawsuits accusing Monsanto of hiding Roundup’s health risks.
Bayer set aside as much as $16-billion to resolve more than 100,000 cases over Roundup, which it acquired when it bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63-billion. The conglomerate now faces a second wave of suits over the weedkiller, many of which include failure-to-warn claims that have been the basis for many of the jury verdicts against the company.
In their decision, the US appeals court cited how federal regulation requires health warnings on pesticide labels to conform to those approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.
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The ruling potentially sets up the case for review by the US Supreme Court. In February, another federal appeals court in Atlanta rejected the German company’s argument that federal law preempts, or trumps, state law on what warnings must be posted on pesticides.
The ruling creates a “split among the federal appellate courts and necessitates a review by the U.S. Supreme Court,” a Bayer spokesman said in an email.
Tom Kline, a Philadelphia lawyer who represented a man who claims Roundup exposure caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the ruling.
In another Roundup case, a client of Kline was awarded more than $2-billion by a Philadelphia jury. In June, however, that verdict was cut by 82% to $400-million.