03 October 2026, Washington, D.C.: Bayer is facing a fresh jury trial in St. Louis, Missouri over claims that its glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup causes cancer, a trial that began September 29, 2026, even as the company’s proposed 7.25 billion dollar nationwide settlement remains under judicial review following a final approval hearing held earlier in September. The dual-track situation underlines how, despite a major US Supreme Court win for Bayer earlier this year, the company’s Roundup liability exposure is far from resolved.
The St. Louis trial involves three plaintiffs, Theresa Aretino, Cynthia Fernandez (whose claim is being pursued after her death), and Betty Larkin, all of whom developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and allege the disease was caused by Roundup exposure. Because the Supreme Court’s June 2026 ruling in Durnell v. Monsanto barred plaintiffs from arguing that Roundup’s label should have carried a cancer warning (the Court held, 7-2, that federal law requires herbicide labels to follow EPA-approved language, and the EPA has concluded no cancer warning is required), the plaintiffs in this case are instead pursuing design-defect and inadequate-testing claims. Their attorney, Greg Dovel, argued that Monsanto did not adequately test Roundup before bringing it to market. Bayer’s attorney, Paul Boehm, countered that the plaintiffs cannot prove glyphosate is too dangerous to be sold at all, pointing to decades of regulatory safety reviews.
Roughly 65,000 Roundup-related claims remain outstanding against Bayer across US state and federal courts, a figure confirmed in multiple independent legal-industry reports. That is on top of an earlier settlement, reached around 2020, that resolved roughly 100,000 claims for about 10 to 11 billion dollars. Bayer’s current proposed settlement, announced in February 2026 and valued at 7.25 billion dollars, is designed to resolve most of the remaining and future claims through a tiered compensation structure based on factors including age at diagnosis and severity of illness, with payouts to be distributed over an extended multi-year period. A final approval hearing was held on September 14, 2026 before Judge Timothy Boyer in a St. Louis-area Missouri court, with objecting law firms arguing the payouts undervalue claimants’ cases; Judge Boyer had not issued a ruling as of early October.
In parallel, the US EPA is conducting a fresh scientific re-evaluation of glyphosate’s safety profile, with completion expected by the end of 2026. That review, rather than the courts, is likely to be the more consequential event for the molecule’s long-term regulatory standing in the United States.
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