Forbes | By Jenny Splitter
Is there weed killer in wine and beer? That question was posed by multiple headlines this week after testing conducted by a consumer advocacy group revealed traces of glyphosate in almost twenty brands of booze, including one that was labeled organic.
Law360 | By Dorothy Atkins
A California federal judge overseeing a high-profile jury trial over claims Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer blasted the plaintiff’s attorney on the first day of trial Monday, saying she’d intentionally revealed restricted information in her opening statements for the trial’s first phase, and threatening her with sanctions.
Courthouse News Service | By Helen Christophi
On the first day of a federal jury trial over whether Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup caused a California man’s cancer, a San Francisco judge threatened to sanction the man’s lawyer for discussing prohibited evidence in front of the jury.
The Recorder | By Ross Todd
The first bellwether trial in the multidistrict litigation targeting Monsanto Co. with claims that its herbicide Roundup causes cancer got underway with some fireworks, as the federal judge overseeing the case threatened the lead plaintiffs lawyer in the case during her opening statements with sanctions.
Science20 | By Geoffrey Kabat
A new analysis, which appeared in the journal Mutation Research, claims to show evidence linking exposure to the common weedkiller glyphosate to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), a rare form of cancer, but it provides no new data and is not what it presents itself to be.
Forbes | By Steven Salzberg
(Quick answer: probably not. See my update at the bottom of this post.) For many years, environmental activists have been concerned about the herbicide glyphosate, which is the main ingredient in RoundUp®, the world’s most widely-used weed killer.
Reuters | By Tina Bellon
The federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation over Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup allegedly causing cancer said the opinions of plaintiffs’ experts were of “pretty low quality,” but that he could not exclude them due to rulings by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Law360 | By Dorothy Atkins
A California federal judge Wednesday criticized the “low quality” of opinions offered by several plaintiffs’ expert witnesses proposed for an upcoming bellwether trial over multidistrict allegations that Monsanto’s Roundup caused cancer, saying the witnesses’ evidence is weak but that may not be enough to prevent their testifying.
Bloomberg | By Adam Allington
The threat to public lands posed by invasive plant species is increasing by about ten million acres each year, and conservationists fear they will lose their best tool to combat it.
Law360 | By Dorothy Atkins
In a heated exchange Monday, a California federal judge overseeing multidistrict litigation over claims that Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller causes cancer questioned whether a plaintiff’s attorney was working in the best interest of his client, saying a proposed jury instruction appeared to advantage litigants in future cases, but not his client.
Bayer today provided an update on its five-point plan to address future Roundup™ litigation risk after its May 27th decision to withdraw from the national class process. The company is now in more control of important aspects of the risk mitigation process and has sketched out two basic scenarios going forward to provide a path to closure of this litigation. The first scenario is based on obtaining a favorable decision by the United States Supreme Court on a cross-cutting issue like federal preemption which would effectively and largely end the U.S. Roundup™ litigation. The second scenario assumes that the Supreme Court either declines to hear the Hardeman case or issues a ruling in favor of plaintiff – in that case the company would activate its own claims administration program.
Read about the five-point plan here.