
Missouri Appeals Court Upholds $611M Judgment in Roundup Liability Case
May 28, 2025 | Source: Missouri Independent | by Rudi Keller
German chemical giant Bayer received no relief from runaway litigation costs associated with Roundup herbicide Tuesday when the Western District Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a $611 million judgment that its product causes cancer.
The decision, in a case involving three plaintiffs who sued in Cole County, is one of the reasons the company, which acquired Roundup as a product when it merged with Monsanto, in 2018, is considering dropping the product entirely. The company faces 67,000 lawsuits claiming the main ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, with many of those cases awaiting trial in St. Louis County, where the company has its Bayer Crop Science headquarters.
The company failed to win passage of a bill intended to shield it from litigation in Missouri. The bill narrowly passed the House but lobbying missteps, including a campaign targeting some of the most conservative members of the state Senate, doomed it. The company did win passage of similar legislation in North Dakota and in Georgia.
In November 2023, a Cole County jury awarded $1.6 billion to three plaintiffs who claimed their cancer was caused by glyphosate exposure while using Roundup. Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green reduced the $500 million punitive damages awarded to each plaintiff, instead reducing each award by varying amounts.
Green did not change the amounts awarded for actual damages, which ranged from $5.6 million to $38 million and totaled $61.1 million.