Roundup
The Roundup MDL, centralized in the Northern District of California in 2016 before Judge Vince Chhabria, consolidates claims that glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, litigated primarily on a failure-to-warn theory given Roundup's registration and labeling under FIFRA. With 3,925 actions currently coordinated, this remains one of the largest and most active mass torts in the federal system, notwithstanding a major settlement already in its history.
The structural feature most relevant to understanding this docket's duration and resolution risk today is a 2024 federal circuit split on FIFRA preemption: the Third Circuit held that FIFRA preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims, directly conflicting with earlier Ninth and Eleventh Circuit decisions holding no such preemption applies. That conflict creates a genuinely open legal question, one with real potential for U.S. Supreme Court review, and its resolution would materially reshape which claims can proceed and on what legal theory, making it a more consequential near-term variable than any single bellwether trial outcome.
Bellwether trial activity itself has produced a track record, with Bayer reported to have prevailed in the substantial majority of trials that reached verdict through late 2023, though that program has continued to develop and the current record should be checked directly rather than assumed static this far removed from that reporting. Layered on top of both the preemption question and the bellwether record is Bayer's own settlement posture: a 2020 global settlement resolved a large share of historical claims, but did not fully close out the docket, and reports from mid-2025 indicated the company was weighing further settlement measures, including a possible subsidiary bankruptcy filing.
Criterica Intelligence's platform is built to track exactly this kind of multi-variable structural picture, circuit splits, bellwether records, and settlement posture together, rather than reducing a docket this complex to a single predicted outcome.
A 2024 circuit split emerged on whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims: the Third Circuit found preemption, conflicting with prior Ninth and Eleventh Circuit rulings that found no preemption, a conflict that increases the likelihood of U.S. Supreme Court review of the question.
A 2024 circuit split, the Third Circuit finding preemption against contrary Ninth and Eleventh Circuit rulings, creates a genuinely open legal question with real potential for Supreme Court review, and its resolution would reshape which claims can proceed on a failure-to-warn theory.
Only partially. It resolved a large share of historical claims but excluded certain cases and, per 2023 reporting, left a substantial number of claims pending, which is why the MDL remains an active docket rather than a closed one.
Through late 2023, Bayer was reported to have prevailed in the substantial majority of bellwether trials that reached verdict, though that record continues to develop and should be checked against current reporting rather than treated as fixed.
That would materially change the resolution landscape for pending claims, since a bankruptcy filing would shift claims into a different forum and process; whether and how that might occur was, per the sourced reporting, still undetermined.
Statistics shown reflect historical or illustrative model outputs derived from real case data. They are not predictions or guarantees of any individual outcome. Litigation results depend on facts, jurisdiction, judge, and counsel, and vary case by case. Model accuracy is subject to selection effects and changing legal dynamics.