Roundup is a weedkiller first marketed by the company Monsanto in 1974. It contains glyphosate[1], which kills weeds by inhibiting a key enzyme. Roundup has been subject to recent and recurring litigation, wherein plaintiffs allege that their long-term exposure to the glyphosate in Roundup caused their cancers. After years of high‑profile verdicts across multiple jurisdictions, Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, has proposed a $7.25 billion global settlement for current and future Roundup‑related cancer claims through a long‑term claims program extending up to twenty-one years. The proposal is subject to court approval by the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court of St. Louis, Missouri, and if the Court does not approve the global settlement, the continuing litigation will influence how New Jersey courts interpret the New Jersey Products Liability Act (“NJPLA”), N.J.S.A. § 2A:58C‑1 et seq.
This alert discusses the background of the Roundup litigation, the details and potential implications of Monsanto’s proposed global settlement, current impacts in New Jersey courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States’s (“SCOTUS”) grant of certiorari on whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”), 7 U.S.C. 136 et seq., preempts state-law failure-to-warn lawsuits regarding Roundup’s alleged cancer risks.
Glyphosate/Roundup
As background, plaintiffs allege that long-term exposure to glyphosate in Roundup causes cancer, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Roundup received its first experimental-use permit in 1974, and it entered the market in 1976. In 2018, Bayer AG acquired the creator of Roundup, Monsanto. According to Bayer AG, each year the world loses between 26% and 40% of its crop production to weeds, pests, and diseases. Bayer AG asserts that without crop protection, these losses could easily double.[2]
In November 2023, the European Union Commission, which follows a more strict, proactive, and precautionary principle than the United States, reapproved glyphosate for ten years. The decision followed favorable scientific assessments by the Commission’s health and safety agencies, including the European Chemicals Agency and European Food Safety Authority. The agencies did not identify critical areas of concern. However, in March 2025, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”[3] Then, in December 2025, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, retracted an alleged, independent study it published in 2000 that found glyphosate was not a human health risk despite evidence of a cancer link.[4] The journal cited concerns about the authorship of the paper, the validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and study sponsor, and potential conflicts of interest of the authors. [5]
The First Lawsuit
In 2018, a California jury awarded compensatory and punitive damages totaling $289 million to plaintiff, Mr. Johnson, in Johnson v. Roundup – the first verdict in the Roundup litigation. Mr. Johnson, a school district grounds manager and heavy user of Roundup Pro and a similar product, Ranger Pro, had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The complaint stated that Monsanto “wrongfully concealed information” about the hazardous nature of Roundup and, although aware of the risks incurred by Roundup users, Monsanto “made conscious decisions not to redesign, warn or inform the unsuspecting public.” The jury held Monsanto liable for failing to warn Mr. Johnson about cancer risks associated with Roundup. While appeals later reduced the award to $78 million, then ultimately to $21 million, the verdict still opened the floodgates to tens of thousands of additional claims, shaping the trajectory of the litigation.
February 2026 Proposed Settlement
On February 17, 2026, Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion class action settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits in the United States alleging that the company failed to warn people that Roundup could cause cancer. The proposed settlement requires Bayer to make annual payments into a special fund for up to twenty-one years, totaling up to $7.25 billion. Bayer submitted the agreement to a Missouri state court judge in the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court of St. Louis, Missouri, who has not yet approved it.
The amount paid out to individuals would vary depending on how they used Roundup, their age at the time of their cancer diagnosis, and the severity of the disease. For example, under the proposed settlement, an agricultural, industrial, or turf worker with prolonged Roundup exposure would receive an average of $165,000 if diagnosed with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma before age sixty. By contrast, individuals diagnosed at age seventy-eight or older would receive an average of $10,000.
As part of the Missouri court’s approval process, members of the class will receive notice and an opportunity to opt out of the settlement. According to Bayer, Monsanto “will have the right to terminate the settlement without claims payments if the number of opt-outs is excessive.” A class action permits plaintiffs to litigate claims on behalf of a broader group whose members share common questions of law or fact.
According to Bayer Monsanto, “following preliminary approval, the next step in the legal process involves notice to potential class members and a 90-day period, ending on June 4, during which members of the class can opt out or file objections. Once this next phase is complete, the court will hold a fairness hearing on July 9 and decide whether to grant final approval of the settlement, which will be subject to potential appeals. All lawsuits in Missouri brought by class settlement members are stayed, except for opt outs, until the Court reaches a final judgement on the class settlement.” The proposed class action settlement does not impact the pending matters in the New Jersey MCL.
New Jersey: Roundup Multicounty Litigation – Bergen County
In January 2024, pursuant to New Jersey Rule 4:38A and codified thereunder in Directive 02-19: Multicounty Litigation Guidelines and Criteria for Designation (“Guidelines”), a group of plaintiffs in New Jersey filed an application for centralized management in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Atlantic County. Plaintiffs asserted claims for grievous injuries as a direct and proximate result of their alleged use of Roundup, including their diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. As set forth in the Guidelines, mass tort designation (multi-county litigation) is warranted when a litigation involves a large number of parties; many claims with common, recurrent issues of law and fact that are associated with a single product; the parties are geographically dispersed; and there is a high degree of remoteness between court and actual decision makers in the litigation, among other considerations.
Plaintiffs succeeded in their application and a Multicounty Litigation was formed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Bergen County (“NJMCL Roundup Court”). Pursuant to the NJMCL Roundup Court’s governing Case Management Order, plaintiffs filed a Master Complaint on the Roundup MCL Docket. Master pleadings provide the court with a unified overview of the claims and defenses, reducing the burden of handling large volumes of individual filings.
New Jersey: Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss All MCL Complaints
On December 19, 2025, the Defendants in the NJMCL Roundup Court, Monsanto Company, Bayer Corporation, Bayer U.S. LLC, and Bayer CropScience LP (n/k/a Bayer CropScience LLC) moved to dismiss, in entirety, the 121 complaints. Monsanto and Bayer CropScience LP seek dismissal of all out‑of‑state plaintiffs’ claims for lack of personal jurisdiction, request consolidation of all claims into two NJPLA causes of action, design defect and failure to warn, and move to dismiss plaintiffs’ punitive‑damages demand.
As to the personal jurisdiction argument, defendants argue that many plaintiffs lack a connection to New Jersey, that their injuries occurred outside New Jersey, and that Monsanto and Bayer CropScience LP are not citizens of New Jersey. Therefore, plaintiffs lack a basis to ask the NJMCL Roundup Court to assert personal jurisdiction over Monsanto and Bayer CropScience LP. Bayer U.S. LLC’s headquarters are in New Jersey, and therefore, it could not make the same arguments.
Nonetheless, all defendants contend that the NJPLA subsumes all the plaintiffs’ claims because the claims arise from alleged “harm caused by a product” (except plaintiffs’ claim for breach of express warranty). Defendants argue that plaintiffs wrongly invoke the NJPLA’s environmental‑tort exception, and it does not apply because Roundup is a consumer product, not an airborne industrial contaminant, such as asbestos or other chemicals treated as environmental hazards.
Defendants claim plaintiffs cannot bring common law claims in addition to their statutory claims under the NJPLA because it expressly excludes actions involving products intended for personal use, such as Roundup. Accordingly, defendants assert that the NJLPA bars plaintiffs’ common‑law claims of strict liability, negligence, breach of implied warranty, and fraudulent concealment, limiting plaintiffs to two NJPLA causes of action: design defect and failure to warn. Although defendants acknowledge that the NJPLA does not subsume plaintiffs’ breach-of-express‑warranty claim, they argue that the court should still dismiss it for lack of factual support. They further contend that plaintiffs have not pleaded with facts showing actual malice or willful and wanton to sufficiently sustain any claim for punitive damages.
In opposition to the personal jurisdiction argument, plaintiffs argue that the NJMCL Roundup Court has personal jurisdiction over Monsanto and Bayer CropScience LP because 100 Bayer Boulevard in Whippany, New Jersey, is their “nerve center” (corporate filings, officer activity, and management across related entities). Plaintiffs further contend that the registrations of Monsanto and Bayer CropScience LP, by registering to do business in the state and appointing in-state agents, consented to jurisdiction in New Jersey.
As to defendants’ argument that the NJPLA applies, thus the NJMCL Roundup Court should dismiss all plaintiffs’ common-law claims, plaintiffs maintain that defendants have not sufficiently shown that the environmental‑tort exception does not apply. To argue that their claims fall within the exception, plaintiffs assert that their claims arise from occupational exposure to Roundup, which they characterize as a toxic substance analogous to asbestos, citing Fowler v. Akzo Nobel Chems., Inc., 251 N.J. 300, 323 (2022).
Plaintiffs further contend that the NJPLA does not subsume their claims under New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act because the Master Complaint alleges extensive affirmative misrepresentations, omissions, and deceptive practices consistent with the court’s holding that where a Consumer Fraud Act claim alleges express misrepresentations, such a plaintiff may assert such a claim notwithstanding the plaintiff’s ability to assert a separate claim under the NJPLA. Sun Chem. Corp. v. Fike Corp., 243 N.J. 319 (2020). Finally, plaintiffs argue that they sufficiently pleaded their claim for breach of express warranty consistent with rulings throughout New Jersey.
The NJMCL Roundup Court was to hear the motion on February 5, 2026, but it has not yet entered an order. The next scheduled event is a case management conference on April 1, 2026. As previously stated, all state lawsuits in Missouri are stayed until the Missouri Court reaches a final judgment on the class settlement.
The NJMCL Roundup Court’s decision will impact other product liability claims across this jurisdiction. If the NJMCL Roundup Court adopts plaintiffs’ position that the NJPLA’s environmental‑tort exception extends to products used in occupational settings, a broader range of consumer‑product claims could evade the NJPLA’s limitations.
U.S. Supreme Court
On January 16, 2026, SCOTUS, following Monsanto’s petition, granted certiorari and said that it would hear an issue stemming from Durnell v. Monsanto Co., case number 1922-CC00221. In Durnell, plaintiff John Durnell claimed to have developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma from his long use of Roundup and that Monsanto failed to warn him about the cancer risks. The jury awarded Mr. Durnell $1.25 million. The Missouri Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. Durnell v. Monsanto Co., 707 S.W.3d 828 (Mo. Ct. App. 2025). The issue before SCOTUS: “Whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning.”
FIFRA, 7 U.S.C. 136 et seq., prohibits the distribution or sale of a pesticide “that is not registered” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”). In the interest of uniformity, FIFRA precludes states from imposing any labeling requirements that are “in addition to or different from those required” under FIFRA. According to SCOTUS’s “Question Presented Report,” FIFRA establishes a federal system regulating pesticide labeling and bars states from imposing different or additional labeling requirements. For decades, the EPA has consistently found that glyphosate does not cause cancer and has repeatedly approved Roundup labels without a cancer warning, changes that Monsanto cannot make without EPA approval.
Despite this, more than 100,000 plaintiffs claim Monsanto should have warned that glyphosate causes cancer. Courts are split on whether FIFRA preempts these failure‑to‑warn claims. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit says yes, while the Missouri Court of Appeals, along with the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits and California and Oregon Courts of Appeal, have held that it does not. SCOTUS is expected to hear arguments in April 2026 and deliver a decision by late June 2026. A ruling in favor of Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, could effectively eliminate many of the tens of thousands of remaining Roundup lawsuits. Bayer reports that as of October 2025, it had already resolved in some fashion about 132,000 of the roughly 197,000 Roundup‑related claims, including a portion via dismissal on the basis that claims that fall outside of the requisite statute of limitations or lack a qualifying cancer diagnosis.
The forthcoming decision from SCOTUS will proceed independently of Bayer’s settlement proposal. Nonetheless, if the settlement is approved, it might mitigate some of the uncertainty surrounding the court’s ruling. Claimants would be guaranteed compensation even if SCOTUS ultimately rules in Bayer’s favor, while Bayer would gain protection against potentially greater liability should the Court rule against it.
Bill Anderson, Bayer’s American Chief Executive Officer, stated that the settlement “complements” the SCOTUS case, even though a ruling in Bayer’s favor could ultimately invalidate many of the claims the company seeks to resolve. He explained that securing both the agreement and a favorable SCOTUS decision would offer “the tightest possible form of containment” of the litigation by resolving existing cases and making future claims significantly easier for the company to defend.
Client Impacts
The decisions from the NJMCL Roundup Court and SCOTUS will affect product manufacturers. Whether positively or negatively as to their defense of the Roundup claims remains to be seen. If the NJMCL Roundup Court accepts plaintiffs’ view that the environmental-tort exception of the NJPLA applies to products a person used in occupational settings, more consumer‑product claims could escape the NJPLA’s limitations. It would open the door to common‑law theories, fraud, negligence, and breach of implied warranty. To date, the NJPLA has normally preempted such claims. Such a development will likely increase litigation complexity and potential damages. However, if SCOTUS rules that EPA‑approved labels bar state tort claims, even when plaintiffs allege inadequate warnings, federally regulated manufacturers gain a powerful shield against large‑scale state‑law liability.
If Bayer’s proposed global settlement is approved, it would further reshape the litigation landscape. Approval could resolve a substantial portion of existing claims, reduce the volume of future filings, and limit the practical impact of adverse rulings from either the NJMCL Roundup Court or SCOTUS. For manufacturers, this could provide greater predictability and containment of long‑term liability, even as legal questions continue to develop.
Footnotes
[1] According to the National Pesticide Information Center, glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide. This means it will kill most plants by preventing them from making certain proteins that they need to grow. Glyphosate inhibits a specific enzyme pathway in plants and some microorganisms.
[2] Managing the Roundup™ Litigation | Bayer Global
[3] A Study Is Retracted, Renewing Concerns About the Weedkiller Roundup – The New York Times
[4] Gary M. Williams (New York Medical College), Robert Kroes (Ritox, Utrecht), and Irene C. Munro (Cantox Health Sciences) authored the study.
