Andrew Clements

Deciding an “unusually difficult” costs application, a judge has declined to award Monsanto all of its costs for defending a class action alleging its Roundup weed killer is carcinogenic, saying the agrochemical giant should have pushed harder for a split trial. 

Plaintiff firm Maurice Blackburn will foot the bill for the unsuccessful class action against Monsanto over weed killer Roundup, but the company’s reluctance to split the trial in two has come back to bite it.

A judge has dismissed a class action alleging Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer is carcinogenic but did not go so far as to say it definitively does not cause cancer, while also dressing down the lawyers for both sides for causing delays in the case.

Defending allegations that its popular weed killer Roundup is carcinogenic, agrochemical giant Monsanto has accused the class action of having its “finger on the scales” when presenting scientific evidence to the court.

A class action against agrochemical giant Monsanto has told the court that there is “no safe level of exposure” to carcinogens allegedly present in the company’s popular weed killer Roundup. 

Monsanto can’t throw out the evidence of an expert for the plaintiff in a class action over its Roundup product who has testified that the company engaged in criminal conduct in trying to bury scientific reports on the popular weed killer’s alleged cancer-causing properties.

On the first day of a seven-week trial, the applicant in a class action against Monsanto has taken aim at the agrochemical giant’s “same old approach” to undermining decades of evidence it says demonstrates the cancer-causing properties of popular weed killer Roundup.

Agrochemical giant Monsanto is digging in for a fight in a class action over its alleged carcinogenic weed killer, Roundup, having refused to budge in mediation despite a $16 billion settlement in the US.

The judge overseeing a class action against Monsanto over its weed killer has rejected the agrochemical giant’s application to amend the common questions to be decided at a liability trial to account for its alternative defence.

A busy judge has pushed the parties in a class action against agrochemical giant Monsanto to split the trial to focus first on the question of whether the company’s Roundup weed killer causes cancer so that he can avoid writing a judgment of “hundreds and hundreds” of pages.