U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California. Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM
A federal judge who criticized Monsanto for its failure to finalize settlements in a $10.9 billion Roundup deal gave its lawyers until Nov. 2 to iron out the details.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California, at a Zoom hearing Thursday, said his stay on the litigation would expire on that date, after which he could remand cases for trials, possibly in California, Nebraska, North Carolina or Illinois.
"Once Nov. 2 rolls around, I can start working on those again, refresh my recollection on where I was with those before the settlement was announced, and start sending cases back to trial to the extent they survive summary judgment," Chhabria said.
Kenneth Feinberg, whom Chhabria had appointed as special master, said he was certain the cases teed up for trials in their home courts would settle before then.
"My optimism knows no bounds," Feinberg told the judge.
Chhabria set the next hearing for Nov. 9.
On June 24, Bayer announced it had resolved 75% of the 125,000 Roundup claims alleging its pesticide caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Chhabria, who oversees the multidistrict litigation, called a hearing last month to discuss the settlement after receiving numerous confidential letters from plaintiffs' attorneys insisting that Bayer had reneged on their agreements.
"What I am concerned about is that Monsanto may be manipulating this litigation process to its advantage somehow," he said at the Aug. 27 hearing. "My only concern is that I don't want the litigation to be used as a pawn in settlement negotiations, either way. I don't want them to manipulate, or take advantage, and use to their advantage a stay in the litigation, and I don't want lifting of the stay to prompt settlement."
Feinberg said at the time that fewer than 32,000 cases actually had settled, about 12,000 of which were in state courts, not the MDL before Chhabria.
But, in a Sept. 17 case management statement, lawyers wrote that "master settlement agreements have now been reached" with three leading plaintiffs firms, resolving about 12,000 Roundup cases in state and federal courts. Those firms included R. Brent Wisner, of Los Angeles-based Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, who obtained Roundup verdicts of $2 billion in 2019 and $289 million in 2018, both in California state courts.
Of the 3,700 lawsuits in the MDL, both sides were "actively engaged in ongoing settlement discussions" for 1,041 of the 1,954 cases that had not yet settled, lawyers said in the case management statement.
"We're working to put in place a program to accelerate discussions and bring agreements to fruition with these firms," said Bayer attorney William Hoffman, of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, at Thursday's hearing. "What we need to do is get on our bicycles and keep moving forward."
Bayer's lawyers disagree with plaintiffs attorneys on trials. Plaintiffs lawyers asked that a bellwether trial that has not settled "should be set for trial as soon as practicable in light of COVID." Bayer preferred to wait for a summary judgment ruling in the case, and objected to a virtual trial.
Bayer continues to appeal Roundup verdicts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reviewing the $80 million award, the first bellwether trial in the multidistrict litigation, on Oct. 23. Last month, both sides petitioned the California Supreme Court to review the 2018 award, which an appeals court reduced to $20.5 million.
Amanda Bronstad
Amanda Bronstad is the ALM staff reporter covering class actions and mass torts nationwide. She writes the email dispatch Law.com Class Actions: Critical Mass. She is based in Los Angeles.