By Peter Hobson and Alasdair Pal
CANBERRA (Reuters) -An Australian judge on Thursday dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller can cause a type of blood cancer, a boost for the company which is grappling with a slew of similar cases in the United States.
Justice Michael Lee of Australia’s Federal Court ruled that on the balance of probabilities, there was insufficient evidence to conclude that Roundup can cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma (NHL).
“It is not proven in this proceeding on a balance of probabilities… that throughout the relevant period use of, and or exposure to Roundup products increased an individual’s risk of developing NHL,” Lee said.
The German pharmaceutical and chemicals company has maintained that Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, is safe. It says it “fully stands behind its glyphosate-based products, which have been used around the world for almost 50 years.”
The Australian class action against Bayer subsidiaries united more than 1,000 claimants and is one of some 40 cases filed outside the United States, all in either Canada or Australia.
Lead claimant, 41-year-old Kelvin McNickle, said he used Roundup to spray weeds for over two decades on his family’s property and while working for a vegetation management company. He developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma aged 35.
In the United States, Bayer has prevailed in 14 of the last 20 Roundup trials, but it also racked up a string of losses in late 2023 and early 2024, resulting in more than $4 billion in damages awarded in verdicts.
Some of those verdicts have seen the amounts awarded reduced but the string of wins for plaintiffs shattered investor and company hopes that the worst of the Roundup litigation was over.
The company still faces more than 50,000 outstanding claims in the United States. A request for an agreement to prevent future cases was denied by a U.S. court.
Roundup was originally produced by U.S. agrochemical company Monsanto, which Bayer acquired for $63 billion in 2018.
The company has replaced glyphosate with new active ingredients in its products for household use in the United States to reduce the risk of litigation as most claims have come from home users.
It continues to sell glyphosate-based weedkillers to farmers, who rely on it heavily.
(Reporting by Peter Hobson in Canberra and Alasdair Pal in Sydney; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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