Protest against Monsanto outside the US Supreme Court in April 2026. The company later won a key Roundup case there — but around 65,000 lawsuits are still pending.
Bayer has already spent billions of dollars on Roundup litigation, increased its legal provisions and secured an important victory before the US Supreme Court. Now a settlement worth up to $7.25 billion is intended to remove much of the remaining uncertainty. In a St. Louis court, subsidiary Monsanto is seeking approval for a long-term compensation system covering current and potential future cancer claims. For Bayer, the issue goes beyond the size of the payments: The company is trying to turn an open-ended legal risk into a financial obligation it can finally calculate.
Monsanto seeks approval for the sweeping settlement
On Monday, Monsanto urged Judge Timothy Boyer in St. Louis to grant final approval to the class settlement agreed in February.
The agreement is designed to cover nearly all current and future US lawsuits alleging that exposure to Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Around 65,000 such cases are still pending in US courts.
No decision was made during the hearing. Boyer gave both sides additional deadlines to file submissions by the end of the week but did not say when he would rule on final approval.
Monsanto made clear how important the proceedings have become. Company attorney James Bennett described the agreement as the available path toward a comprehensive resolution while also signaling that Monsanto is prepared to continue litigating if the settlement fails.
The company sounds considerably more confident than it did at the beginning of the year.
The reason lies in Washington.
The Supreme Court changed the balance of power
On June 25, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Monsanto’s favor in Durnell v. Monsanto.
At the heart of the case was a fundamental legal question: Can a company be held liable under individual state laws for failing to place a cancer warning on a pesticide when the federal regulatory system does not require such a warning?
The Supreme Court held that the federal pesticide law FIFRA pre-empts state warning requirements when they impose labeling obligations that are additional to or different from federal requirements.
In the Missouri case at issue, state law would have required Monsanto to place a cancer warning on its product despite federal labeling rules not requiring one. The Court found that such an additional requirement was barred.
For Bayer, the ruling is highly significant because so-called failure-to-warn claims make up a major part of the Roundup litigation.
The company expects the decision to lead to the dismissal of numerous existing warning-label lawsuits and to prevent comparable future claims.
That remains Bayer’s interpretation of the ruling’s reach. Other legal theories are not automatically eliminated.
Still, the litigation risk has changed substantially.
Even some lawyers who had previously been skeptical of the settlement reconsidered their position after the Supreme Court ruling. The reason is straightforward: Plaintiffs who reject the settlement and pursue individual cases now face a less favorable legal environment.
Up to $7.25 billion — but not all at once
The settlement is also unusual in its financial structure.
If it receives final approval, Monsanto would commit to declining and capped payments totaling no more than $7.25 billion. The program could run for as long as 21 years.
That distinction matters.
The $7.25 billion would not represent an immediate cash outflow. The arrangement is designed to spread the financial burden over a long period and give Bayer far greater visibility over future legal costs.
Eligible claimants would include people who used Roundup before the relevant settlement date and who have either already been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or receive such a diagnosis within 16 years after the settlement becomes final.
Depending on the individual circumstances, claimants could receive between $10,000 and $165,000. Factors would include the severity of the illness, age at diagnosis and the nature of exposure.
That is also one of the main points of criticism.
Opponents argue that compensation is too low and object in particular to including people who may not become ill until years from now. They say future claimants could lose access to an individual lawsuit before the full extent and consequences of their illness are known.
Supporters argue that this is precisely the advantage of the system: It would allow affected people to receive compensation without having to spend years fighting through multiple levels of the courts.
The first multibillion-dollar settlement did not solve the problem
Bayer has already experienced how difficult it is to create a supposedly final solution.
In 2020, the company set aside roughly $10 billion to resolve a large share of the Roundup claims pending at the time.
Many cases were settled.
But the central problem remained: New plaintiffs continued to emerge.
That open-ended future liability is what made the litigation so damaging to Bayer.
A traditional settlement gives a company a known amount, a payment and an endpoint. With a product that may continue to generate new illness allegations and lawsuits for years, however, a significant tail risk remains.
No company can know with certainty how many additional claims will be filed or how high individual jury awards may become.
The new settlement is designed specifically to contain that uncertainty.
It therefore seeks to address not only known plaintiffs but also people who may be diagnosed years later.
From a corporate-strategy perspective, that mechanism may be more important than the headline figure of $7.25 billion.
Bayer is trying to replace a theoretically unlimited number of future cases with a capped system.
Bayer has already reflected much of the burden on its balance sheet
Such a resolution would, of course, not come cheaply.
In February, Bayer increased provisions and liabilities for litigation from €7.8 billion to €11.8 billion.
Of that total, €9.6 billion related to glyphosate litigation.
The higher reserves also cover other Roundup and PCB settlements as well as litigation expenses, so the figure does not mean Bayer will necessarily have to pay an additional €11.8 billion.
But it shows the scale of the legal cleanup.
For CEO Bill Anderson, containing the litigation has become a central part of Bayer’s broader restructuring.
Legal risks burden a company long before cash actually leaves its accounts.
As long as the size and duration of possible obligations remain uncertain, they complicate investment decisions, financial planning and the valuation of the entire group.
A capped payment schedule extending over 21 years may therefore be economically easier to manage than a potentially smaller but unpredictable stream of individual cases.
The scientific dispute over glyphosate has not disappeared
Legal progress does not resolve the scientific controversy either.
In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency has reached a different conclusion. It does not consider glyphosate likely to be carcinogenic under expected real-world exposure and therefore does not require a cancer warning on Roundup labels.
An updated health-risk assessment is expected by the end of 2026.
Bayer points to numerous regulatory reviews and scientific studies and maintains that glyphosate-based products are safe when used as directed.
But the legal question of whether Bayer can be held liable and the scientific question of health risk are not the same.
The Supreme Court ruling primarily determines what warnings individual states may require when federal law already establishes labeling standards.
It is not a new toxicological assessment of glyphosate.
Even approval would not be the final end
Even if Judge Boyer approves the settlement, the Roundup dispute would not necessarily end immediately.
Bayer itself notes that final approval could be appealed.
The agreement would only become effective once any appeals are resolved, a process the company says could take several years.
There would also remain plaintiffs who validly opt out of the class and cases that fall outside the agreement.
Bayer is therefore not yet at the end of the Monsanto story.
But the structure of the risk has changed significantly within only a few months.
In February, the proposed $7.25 billion settlement still faced a highly uncertain legal environment.
Since June, Bayer has also had a Supreme Court ruling that substantially narrows one of the major routes used by plaintiffs.
Monsanto is now attempting to combine the two developments: reduced legal exposure from individual warning-label claims and a long-term system for dealing with those that remain.
From an open-ended risk to a calculable bill
For Bayer, success may no longer mean ending the Roundup crisis without paying billions more.
That is no longer realistic.
The company is instead trying to regain a different form of control.
How many additional payments could arise? Over what period? Which categories of lawsuit will remain possible? And how much money must the group reserve each year?
After eight years in which the Monsanto acquisition was repeatedly overshadowed by new verdicts and rising plaintiff numbers, reliable answers to those questions would already represent significant progress.
Judge Boyer is therefore not merely deciding whether to approve a settlement between a company and a group of claimants.
He is deciding on a central component of Bayer’s attempt to turn an open-ended legal risk back into a manageable corporate liability.
SK
