After thousands of lawsuits accusing its paraquat weedkiller of causing Parkinson’s disease, manufacturer Syngenta has entered into an agreement aimed at settling large swaths of those claims.
A court filing in a Californian court last week confirmed that a letter of agreement had been signed between the parties, with one of the lead plaintiff lawyers, Khaldoun Baghdadi, saying the terms of the settlement should be completed within 30 days.
There have been mounting calls from state and federal lawmakers to ban paraquat, with increasing numbers of Parkinson’s patients saying the company had not warned them of paraquat risks, reports The Guardian.
Numerous scientific studies have linked Parkinson’s to exposure to paraquat, which is commonly used in agriculture, though Syngenta has said the weight of scientific evidence shows its pesticide does not cause the disease.
The agreement would not resolve all of the cases filed in the United States against Syngenta, but could resolve the majority of them.
By mid-April, there were more than 5 800 active lawsuits pending in what is known as multi-district litigation (MDL) being overseen by a federal court in Illinois. There were more than 450 other cases filed in California, and many more in state courts countrywide.
The agreement notice applies to people whose lawsuits are part of the MDL, and could provide settlements for plaintiffs in the cases outside the MDL as well, said Baghdadi.
“Syngenta has settled certain claims in the federal Multi-District Litigation (MDL) and California court in the United States related to paraquat,” the company said.
“Syngenta believes there is no merit to the claims, but litigation can be distracting and costly. Entering into the agreement in no way implies that paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease or that Syngenta has done anything wrong. We stand by the safety of paraquat.
“Despite decades of investigation and more than 1 200 epidemiological and laboratory studies of paraquat, no scientist or doctor has ever concluded in a peer-reviewed scientific analysis that paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease.”
Syngenta’s effort to settle the litigation before any high-profile trials comes after Monsanto’s owner, Bayer, was rocked by similar litigation alleging its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
After the company lost the first Roundup trial, its stock price plummeted, and Bayer has spent years and billions of dollars fighting to end the ongoing litigation.
Lawyers for paraquat plaintiffs in cases outside the MDL expressed frustration with the situation, saying they were not included in the settlement discussions, and were not being given details about the settlement.
They fear their cases may be delayed or otherwise negatively affected by a settlement that benefits some plaintiffs but may not actually provide value to the majority of them.
“These plaintiffs are dying every day,” Majed Nachawati, a lawyer whose clients are outside the MDL, told a judge in the California court hearing last week. He said the news of the settlement was a “shock” because he was not told of these negotiations by the other plaintiffs’ lawyers, as he should have been.
Internal Syngenta documents revealed by The Guardian and the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group, show the company was aware many years ago of scientific evidence that paraquat could affect the brain in ways that cause Parkinson’s, and that it secretly sought to influence scientific research to counter the evidence of harm.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
US farmers sue weedkiller firm over alleged Parkinson’s link
Bayer takes more legal hits over weedkiller products linked to illnesses