What’s Next in Court for Bayer Toxic Chemical Claims

Many Bayer AG investors didn’t realize just how much litigation risk they were getting when the German company spent $63 billion in June 2018 to acquire Monsanto Co., the giant U.S. seed and herbicide maker. Since then, two adverse verdicts concerning Monsanto’s blockbuster weedkiller, Roundup, have rocked Bayer’s shares, which were down 38 percent as of March 20. With more than 11,000 Roundup cases still pending, along with a flood of lawsuits over waterways contaminated with PCBs and fresh cases emerging over another Monsanto herbicide, Dicamba, investors are left to ponder the final cost of Bayer’s increased legal exposure.

It contains the weed-killing chemical glyphosate, which has become widely used by commercial farmers and home gardeners. Over more than four decades, about 3.5 billion pounds of glyphosate was sprayed in the U.S. Glyphosate was declared a probable human carcinogen in 2015 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, which prompted the lawsuits. However, like other regulators around the world, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in 2017 that glyphosate isn’t likely to be carcinogenic to humans at current exposure levels. Monsanto developed Roundup in the 1970s, and then created a multibillion-dollar business around seeds that it genetically modified to resist the chemical.