Bayer surges as Trump govt supports curb on Roundup lawsuits

(Sharecast News) - Bayer shares surged on Tuesday after the Trump's administration threw its weight behind a bid to curb long-running lawsuits alleging its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer. US Solicitor General D. John Sauer called on the Supreme Court to limit the lawsuits, supporting Bayer's premise that federal law governing pesticides preempts lawsuits that make claims over the products under state law.

Bayer has asked the court to hear its appeal of a lower court's decision to uphold a $1.25m verdict awarded by a St. Louis jury in a Missouri state court case in which a plaintiff named John Durnell sued after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma he attributed to his exposure to Roundup.

The German firm, which acquired Roundup as part of its $63bn acquisition of agrochemical company Monsanto in 2018, is facing more than 67,000 similar lawsuits in state and federal courts. It denies that the weedkiller causes harm.

Bayer has paid about $10bn to settle most of the lawsuits that were pending as of 2020 but has failed to get a settlement covering future cases.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com