Bayer wins Roundup weedkiller cancer trial while awaiting settlement ruling

(Corrects the name of the plaintiff who died before trial in paragraph 12)

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Bayer won a trial on Thursday over claims by three women that its Roundup weedkiller caused their cancer, while awaiting a broader ruling from a separate court on the company's $7.25 billion effort to settle other Roundup cases.

The trial was a test for the continued viability of Roundup lawsuits after a US Supreme Court ruling in Bayer's favour limited the legal claims that plaintiffs can bring. 

Bayer is also separately seeking to resolve tens of thousands of other Roundup lawsuits through a proposed $7.25 billion settlement, which is under review by ⁠a Missouri state court judge in St. Louis. 

A St. Louis jury unanimously ruled for Bayer-owned Monsanto in the first case to go to trial after June's Supreme Court ruling. The litigation has weighed on Bayer since its 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, costing the company billions of dollars and driving down its share ​price.

Bayer shares rose 4% to a one-month high at 1011 GMT.

Markus Manns, a portfolio manager at Frankfurt-based Union Investment, said the verdict was one of the most important trial wins for the company.  

"Plaintiffs have failed in their new litigation strategy to prove that Bayer had ignored the risks as early as the development stage of glyphosate," he said.

Bill Dodero, Bayer's US general counsel and global head of litigation, said the verdict showed how difficult it would be for other plaintiffs to win cases after the Supreme Court ruling. 

"This verdict should send a strong signal that plaintiffs who wish to pursue claims in the court system following the Durnell ruling will face significant challenges both in demonstrating they have viable claims and putting forth the necessary evidence to prove them in court," Dodero said in a statement.

PLAINTIFFS SUED IN 2020

Plaintiffs Theresa Aretino, Cynthia Fernandez and Betty Larkin sued Bayer unit Monsanto in 2020 in St. Louis, saying they used Roundup regularly and later developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Their attorneys argued that Roundup was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous, and that Bayer was negligent in selling it. 

The three women are not ​participating in Bayer's proposed settlement. Larkin died before the trial began. 

Reuters viewed ‌the trial and verdict ⁠on Courtroom View Network. Attorneys for Aretino, Fernandez and Larkin did not immediately respond to a request for comment late on Thursday.

Bayer has denied ​the claims and said that decades of studies have shown glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient, is safe and does not cause cancer. 

Bayer faces around 65,000 claims in US state and federal courts from plaintiffs who say they ​developed cancer after using Roundup at home or on the job. 

Before the Supreme Court ruling this year, most lawsuits had alleged that Roundup’s label failed to warn consumers about cancer risks. But the court blocked those legal arguments in June, ruling that federal law requires herbicide makers to use ​the exact label approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has concluded that ​Roundup’s label does ⁠not require a cancer warning.

Bayer has argued that other legal claims, including ​design-defect and negligence, are also foreclosed by ⁠the US Supreme Court's ruling, but plaintiffs' attorneys have argued that those claims are not affected by the ruling. 

The EPA has previously concluded that glyphosate is probably not carcinogenic, but it is in the middle of a new review of its safety.

In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” to humans, but Bayer has said that is an outlier opinion based on flawed methodology. 

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Patricita Weiss and Ludwig BurgerEditing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Jonathan Spicer, Jamie Freed and Tomasz Janowski)