The Supreme Court ruled in favor of former agrochemical giant Monsanto on Thursday in a dispute over whether the company should have warned consumers about potential harms arising from its weed killer product Roundup, in a 7-2 ruling that led shares of parent company Bayer to spike Thursday morning.
Potesters gather at the US Supreme Court on April 27 in Washington, DC.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto—which no longer exists as a separate entity after being bought by Bayer—in a 7-2 ruling, after a man sued the company after contracting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The man, John Durnell, argued his cancer was caused by Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller product, and sued the company in Missouri state court, arguing that under state law, Monsanto should have provided a cancer warning on Roundup’s label.
Roundup uses the herbicide glyphosate, which the Environmental Protection Agency has determined is “unlikely to be a human carcinogen”—but that finding has been disputed, with a World Health Organization working group instead believing it to be “probably carcinogenic.”
