The Supreme Court Just Ruled Against the Main Roundup Cancer Theory — Your Case May Not Be Over
If you used Roundup and later received a non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis, you may have just read the headline and felt the floor drop. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell that federal pesticide law overrides state lawsuits seeking a cancer warning on the Roundup label. The decision reversed a Missouri state court verdict exceeding $1 million and potentially affects thousands of pending claims nationwide. We understand the fear that comes with reading that headline at 2 a.m. — the fear that the case you were counting on, the case that was supposed to answer for what happened to your health, is suddenly gone.
Here is what we need you to hear first: the ruling killed the primary legal theory. It did not kill every legal theory. It did not determine that Roundup is safe. It did not determine that glyphosate does not cause cancer. It did not close every door. What it did was close the biggest, most commonly used door — the failure-to-warn claim that said Monsanto should have put a cancer warning on the label. Other paths exist, and the lawyers who read this decision carefully are already pivoting to them. The ones who did not read it carefully will file the same complaint they always filed and watch it get dismissed on day one.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle toxic tort cases and catastrophic injury litigation, and we take cases in Missouri working with local counsel where required. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before switching to the injured person’s side — he knows how claims get valued, delayed, and denied from the inside. What follows is our honest, plain-language assessment of what this ruling means, what may survive it, and what you should do right now to protect whatever rights you still have.
What the Supreme Court Actually Held in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell
The question before the Court was narrow but decisive: does the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — a law first passed in 1947 — override state tort claims that seek to require a cancer warning on a pesticide label that the EPA approved without one? The majority, in a 7-2 opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh, said yes.
The majority’s reasoning rests on the idea that Congress intended national uniformity in pesticide labeling. Under FIFRA, the EPA reviews pesticide labels during initial registration and every subsequent re-registration. The EPA approved Roundup’s label without a cancer warning, consistent with the agency’s position that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Because federal law gives the EPA control over label content, the majority reasoned, state tort claims that would effectively require a different or additional warning are preempted — they would create the very lack of uniformity Congress sought to prevent.
“In sum, federal law requires Monsanto to sell Roundup with the label that EPA approved at the initial registration and that EPA has subsequently re-approved on multiple occasions — that is, the label without a cancer warning.”
That is the core holding. It means a Missouri jury cannot hear a claim that says “Monsanto should have warned about cancer on the Roundup label” — because the federal government, through the EPA, decided the label did not need that warning, and federal law controls what the label says.
Justice Thomas wrote separately to support the overall result but raised a separate concern: he said the underlying pesticide law itself may have exceeded Congress’s power to regulate commerce between the states. That is a constitutional observation, not a change in the holding — but it signals that the legal foundation of FIFRA itself may face future challenges.
Justice Jackson’s Dissent: The Misbranding Argument That Could Shape What Comes Next
The dissent, written by Justice Jackson and joined by Justice Gorsuch, takes a fundamentally different read of the same statute. Justice Jackson argued that Congress intended pesticide makers to label all relevant dangers of a product — not solely the dangers the EPA approved for the label. She pointed to a separate provision in FIFRA that prohibits “misbranding” — selling a pesticide whose label lacks adequate warnings — and argued that this provision operates independently of the EPA registration process.
“even though the EPA approved Roundup’s label, that label could still lack a necessary warning.”
This is not a minor semantic point. Justice Jackson backed it with a concrete example from the regulatory record: the EPA had previously found that its own prior approved label for Roundup did not meet the law’s standards and imposed fines on Monsanto for mislabeling the product by not adequately warning about a leak risk. In other words, the EPA itself has recognized that an EPA-approved label can still be legally inadequate — which directly undercuts the majority’s premise that EPA approval is the final word on whether a label is sufficient.
The dissent’s argument was rejected by the majority, but it is not dead as a matter of law or strategy. It may inform future litigation if Congressional action reopens the statutory framework, or if lower courts confront cases where a plaintiff argues misbranding rather than failure-to-warn. It also provides a roadmap for legislative fixes — Congress could clarify that the misbranding provision operates independently, which would restore state-law remedies without touching the EPA registration process at all.
Which Roundup Claims Are Now Preempted — and Which Legal Theories May Survive
This is the section that matters most to anyone with a pending or potential Roundup claim. The Supreme Court’s ruling is powerful, but it is not unlimited. It specifically targets state-law failure-to-warn claims — claims that say “the label should have included a cancer warning and did not.” Other product liability theories are not addressed by the ruling and may survive, though their viability is uncertain and will be tested in lower courts over the coming months and years.
Failure to warn (state tort law) — NOW PREEMPTED. This was the primary theory across the entire Roundup litigation landscape. The claim said Monsanto failed to warn users of Roundup’s alleged carcinogenicity through the product label. The Supreme Court held this theory is preempted by FIFRA when the EPA approved the label without a cancer warning, because state tort claims would effectively impose a labeling requirement different from the federally approved label. This theory is now foreclosed in every state, including Missouri, California, and every other jurisdiction where Roundup cases have been filed.
Design defect — POTENTIALLY NON-PREEMPTED. This theory argues that Roundup’s glyphosate-based formulation is inherently unreasonably dangerous regardless of what the label says. It does not depend on the absence of a cancer warning — it challenges the product’s formulation itself, or the availability of safer alternative designs. If a plaintiff can argue that the product is dangerous by design, independent of any labeling deficiency, this theory may survive preemption. This is the primary post-decision litigation path, and its viability is genuinely uncertain. Courts will have to decide whether a design defect claim that rests on evidence of carcinogenicity is really just a failure-to-warn claim in disguise, or whether it is a genuinely independent theory.
Manufacturing defect — POTENTIALLY NON-PREEMPTED. This theory claims that a particular batch of Roundup deviated from its intended formulation in a way that caused harm. It is completely independent of labeling — it says the product that reached the consumer was not the product Monsanto intended to make. This theory would not be affected by the preemption ruling, though it requires proof of a specific batch defect, which is factually distinct from the general carcinogenicity theory that has driven the Roundup litigation. For most plaintiffs, this theory is not practical unless there is evidence that a specific product lot was contaminated or improperly formulated.
Fraudulent concealment and suppression — POTENTIALLY NON-PREEMPTED. These claims allege that Monsanto actively suppressed or manipulated scientific evidence of Roundup’s carcinogenicity, independent of what the label says. The key question is whether these claims are premised on the duty to warn through the product label — if they are, they may be preempted. If they rest on independent duties of honesty in scientific reporting, regulatory interaction, and public statements, they may survive. The distinction matters: a claim that says “Monsanto lied to the EPA” is different from a claim that says “Monsanto should have put a warning on the label.” The former challenges the integrity of the regulatory process itself; the latter challenges the label’s content.
Breach of express warranty — POTENTIALLY NON-PREEMPTED. If Monsanto made specific, affirmative promises about Roundup’s safety — in advertising, marketing materials, or public statements — that turned out to be false, a breach of express warranty claim may survive. This theory is independent of the EPA-approved label; it targets the company’s own voluntary statements, not the federally mandated labeling.
The generalist files the same failure-to-warn complaint that worked before June 2026 — and it gets dismissed on Day One. The lawyer who read Durnell pivots to design defect and fraudulent concealment before the first filing, and may file early motions to clarify the scope of preemption so the court rules on whether non-warning-based theories survive before the plaintiff invests years of litigation.
Monsanto, Bayer, and the Corporate Structure Behind Roundup
Roundup is manufactured by Monsanto Company, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bayer AG, the German pharmaceutical and life sciences conglomerate that acquired Monsanto in 2018. When Bayer bought Monsanto, it inherited a litigation portfolio that has involved multi-billion-dollar settlement programs and tens of thousands of individual claims. Bayer bears the ultimate financial responsibility for the Roundup litigation.
The corporate structure matters for practical reasons. Monsanto is the named defendant in most Roundup cases — it is the entity that designed, manufactured, and sold the product. Bayer is the parent corporation that controls the litigation strategy and the settlement purse. In any surviving case, both entities may be named, and the relationship between them — who made the decisions about what to tell the EPA, who decided what studies to fund, who determined the regulatory strategy — is part of the factual record.
As of mid-2026, the federal multidistrict litigation against Monsanto — MDL-2741, In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation, before Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California — still had approximately 3,900 pending actions. That number had already declined from its peak as earlier settlement programs resolved many claims, but the Supreme Court’s ruling now threatens the theoretical foundation of most remaining cases. The MDL proceedings, however, produced a vast body of discovery — internal Monsanto documents, scientific studies, corporate communications — that may be relevant to the surviving theories, particularly fraudulent concealment and design defect claims.
The Roundup litigation has also involved state-court cases across the country, with significant concentrations in Missouri, California, and other agricultural states. The Missouri state court system, where the original Durnell verdict was obtained, has historically been a favorable forum for plaintiffs in product liability cases — Missouri follows a pure comparative fault system, does not impose a general statutory cap on damages in product liability cases, and allows punitive damages subject to constitutional limitations under Missouri Supreme Court precedent. The Supreme Court’s FIFRA preemption ruling now overrides these state-law remedies for label-based failure-to-warn claims, regardless of how favorable Missouri’s tort system might otherwise be.
The Science of Glyphosate and Cancer: What the Research Says Independent of the Legal Ruling
It is critical to understand what the Supreme Court did not decide. The Court did not rule that glyphosate is safe. The Court did not rule that glyphosate does not cause cancer. The Court did not evaluate the scientific evidence. The Court ruled on a legal question — whether federal labeling law preempts state tort claims — not on a scientific question.
The scientific landscape around glyphosate and cancer is genuinely contested, and that contest predates and exists independently of the Supreme Court’s ruling:
The EPA’s position. The EPA has concluded that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” This determination has been the cornerstone of Monsanto’s preemption defense — the EPA approved the label without a cancer warning because the agency’s own risk assessment did not support one. But the EPA’s position has been the subject of significant scientific and institutional controversy, including criticism of the agency’s methodology and questions about whether industry influence shaped the assessment.
The IARC classification. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the World Health Organization’s specialized cancer agency — classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), based on limited evidence of cancer in humans and sufficient evidence in laboratory animals. IARC’s classification is a hazard identification, not a risk assessment — it identifies whether a substance can cause cancer, not how much exposure it takes. But the divergence between IARC’s conclusion and the EPA’s conclusion is itself part of the story, and it means the scientific question is not settled.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The predominant injury alleged in Roundup litigation is non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), a cancer of the lymphatic system. NHL encompasses a diverse group of blood cancers that arise from lymphocytes. Treatment can include chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplants, depending on the subtype and stage. Some forms are aggressive and require immediate treatment; others are indolent and may be managed over years. The cost of treatment — and the cost of ongoing monitoring, lost wages, and diminished quality of life — can be substantial, running into hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars depending on the course of disease and the treatment required.
The latency problem. Cancers caused by chemical exposure often take years or decades to develop after the exposure. This latency period is both a medical reality and a legal challenge. It means someone who used Roundup regularly in the 1990s or 2000s might not receive a cancer diagnosis until the 2020s. It also means the statute of limitations — the legal deadline to file a lawsuit — may not start running until the person discovered, or should have discovered, the connection between their cancer and the exposure. Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims generally runs five years, and the discovery rule typically applies in toxic tort cases — meaning the clock usually starts when you knew or should have known that your cancer was connected to Roundup, not when you last used the product. The Supreme Court’s ruling does not change the statute of limitations. It changes what theories are available once you file.
Evidence Preservation: What to Save Now, Before It Disappears
Even after the Supreme Court’s ruling, evidence preservation is urgent. The surviving legal theories — design defect, fraudulent concealment, manufacturing defect — require the same evidence that the failure-to-warn claims relied on, and in some cases they require more. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can disappear.
Complete medical records. Your cancer diagnosis, pathology reports, treatment history, and prognosis are stable in medical provider systems, but they must be compiled and organized immediately for any surviving claims. The medical record proves specific causation — that you have cancer, what type it is, when it was diagnosed, and what treatment you have undergone. It also quantifies damages: medical expenses, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, pain and suffering. These records exist in your oncologist’s files, your hospital’s electronic health record system, and your pharmacy records. Request complete copies now, not summaries.
Detailed exposure history. This is the evidence that degrades fastest. Purchase receipts showing when and how much Roundup you bought. Employment records showing your job duties if you used Roundup professionally. Usage logs or calendars showing frequency and duration of use. Witness statements from family members, coworkers, or neighbors who can describe your Roundup use patterns. Every month that passes, memories fade, receipts get discarded, and witnesses become harder to locate. This evidence is essential for any surviving theory because it proves specific causation — that your cumulative glyphosate exposure was sufficient to cause your cancer. For design defect claims, the exposure history establishes the dose-response relationship. For fraudulent concealment claims, it establishes that you used the product during the period when the company was allegedly suppressing evidence.
EPA registration files and regulatory correspondence. These are government records — generally stable but complex to obtain through Freedom of Information Act requests. They establish what the EPA approved and when, and they are central to any preemption analysis. They also may reveal gaps between what EPA approved and what Monsanto’s internal knowledge showed — which is the heart of a fraudulent concealment claim.
Internal Monsanto and Bayer corporate documents. Documents obtained through prior MDL discovery may demonstrate corporate knowledge of cancer risks independent of label warnings. These support fraudulent concealment and design defect theories that may survive preemption. Already-produced documents in the MDL proceedings should be catalogued immediately. The MDL produced a vast body of internal corporate documents — emails, research plans, regulatory strategy memos, scientific study results — that may be directly relevant to whether Monsanto knew more than it told the EPA. These documents must be preserved through litigation holds and catalogued for use in surviving claims.
EPA enforcement records. Justice Jackson’s dissent highlighted a critical fact: the EPA has previously fined Monsanto for mislabeling Roundup on a separate leak-risk warning issue. This enforcement history supports the argument that EPA’s own actions recognize a misbranding standard independent of label approval. These records are public but must be located and integrated into legal arguments promptly. They may also support a fraudulent concealment theory — if Monsanto failed to adequately warn about one risk, the argument goes, it may have failed to adequately warn about others.
The preservation letter — a formal demand that the defendant and all relevant third parties preserve evidence — goes out the day you call us. Not after the legal landscape settles. Not after Congress acts. The day you call. Because every day that passes without a preservation demand is a day the evidence can legally disappear.
Congressional Response: The Farm Bill Fight and Proposed Legislation
The Supreme Court’s decision does not exist in a political vacuum. It explicitly tees up future legislative wrangling, and that wrangling is already underway.
The farm bill — the massive agricultural legislation Congress reauthorizes periodically — has become a battleground for the pesticide labeling preemption issue. Disputes over the Roundup lawsuit shield have complicated passage of the current farm bill. The latest House-passed version of the farm bill included an amendment, sponsored by Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, that stripped language requiring national “uniformity” in pesticide labeling and prohibiting state or local labeling requirements. In other words, the House version would have removed the very statutory framework the Supreme Court relied on to preempt state claims.
After the Supreme Court decision, Representative Luna posted on social media that she would introduce legislation “stripping pesticide companies of any liability protections for the harm their products cause the American people.” She wrote: “These companies purposefully omit labeling information knowing their products cause cancer and other health problems. It is time they are held accountable. Enough is enough.”
On the Senate side, Senator John Boozman of Arkansas unveiled a Senate version of the farm bill that did not include pesticide labeling provisions. Representative Luna warned the Senate not to reinstate those provisions, saying her coalition had the votes to kill the bill if they did.
What does this mean for your case? It means the legal landscape could shift again. If Congress amends FIFRA to strip the preemption shield, state failure-to-warn claims could be revived. But Congressional action is uncertain, politically contested, and could take months or years. We tell every client the same thing about legislative fixes: they are worth watching, but never worth waiting for. The safe assumption is that the law is what the Supreme Court said it is, and any case must be built on the theories that survive today. If Congress acts later, it may reopen doors — but you cannot bet your case on the possibility.
The Defense Playbook After the Ruling: What Monsanto and Bayer Will Do Next
Monsanto and Bayer have just received the most powerful defense ruling in the history of the Roundup litigation. They will use it. Here are the plays you should expect, and the counter to each.
Play 1: The blanket dismissal letter. Within weeks of the ruling, Monsanto’s defense team will send letters to every plaintiff’s attorney with pending failure-to-warn cases, arguing that the claims are now preempted and should be voluntarily dismissed. They will attach the Supreme Court opinion and cite the majority’s language about uniformity and EPA control. The letter is designed to intimidate — to make lawyers and clients believe the entire case is dead.
The counter: the ruling addresses failure-to-warn claims specifically. It does not address design defect, fraudulent concealment, manufacturing defect, or breach of express warranty claims. Any attorney who reads the opinion carefully — rather than reacting to the headline — can respond with a pleading that pivots to non-preempted theories. The dismissal letter is a fishing expedition for lawyers who did not read the decision. Do not take the bait.
Play 2: The “design defect is just failure-to-warn in disguise” motion. Monsanto will argue that any design defect claim that rests on evidence of carcinogenicity is really just a failure-to-warn claim reworded — and therefore also preempted. This is the next legal battleground, and it will be fought in lower courts over the coming months and years.
The counter: a true design defect claim challenges the product’s formulation — the decision to use glyphosate as the active ingredient, the concentration, the absence of safer alternatives. It does not depend on what the label says. The distinction is real, and courts that have addressed similar arguments in other product contexts have recognized that design defect and failure-to-warn are separate theories with separate elements. Filing early motions to clarify the scope of preemption — asking the court to rule on whether non-warning-based theories survive — is the strategic move.
Play 3: The lowball settlement offer to weak cases. Bayer will identify cases with strong causation evidence and exposure histories and offer modest settlements — knowing that the alternative for the plaintiff is a dismissed case. The offer is calibrated to be better than nothing but far less than the case was worth before the ruling.
The counter: a case with strong specific causation evidence — documented heavy exposure, confirmed NHL diagnosis, clean medical history without alternative cancer risk factors — still has real value on non-preempted theories. The settlement offer may reflect Bayer’s assessment of litigation risk, not the true value of the claim. Every settlement offer after this ruling must be evaluated against what the case could be worth on surviving theories, not against what it would have been worth on the now-preempted failure-to-warn claim.
Play 4: The “EPA said it’s safe” argument at every stage. Monsanto will lean on the EPA’s “not likely to be carcinogenic” determination at every opportunity — in motions, in discovery, at trial. The argument is that the federal government’s own agency concluded glyphosate is not a cancer risk, so any claim that it caused a specific person’s cancer is scientifically unfounded.
The counter: the EPA’s determination is one scientific assessment among several, and it has been criticized on methodological grounds. The IARC classification — Group 2A, “probably carcinogenic” — represents a different assessment by a different body using a different framework. The scientific debate is real, and a jury is entitled to hear it. The EPA’s conclusion is admissible evidence, but so is the evidence that contradicts it.
What Your Roundup Case May Be Worth Now
Honesty about case value is not optional — it is the foundation of trust. Here is what we can say about the value of Roundup claims after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Low end: $0. Failure-to-warn claims based on EPA-approved labels are now preempted. If your case relies solely on that theory and cannot pivot to a non-preempted theory, the case may have no value. This is the hard truth, and we will not sugarcoat it.
The pre-ruling baseline. The reversed Missouri verdict in the Durnell case exceeded $1 million — that was a single plaintiff’s recovery under the now-preempted failure-to-warn theory, before the Supreme Court reversed it. Before the ruling, successful Roundup cases had produced verdicts ranging into substantial figures, and Bayer had committed to multi-billion-dollar settlement programs. Those programs addressed the pre-ruling landscape. The post-ruling landscape is different.
High end if non-preempted theories survive: $1 million to $5 million or more. If design defect, fraudulent concealment, or other non-preempted theories survive dismissal motions, and if the plaintiff can prove specific causation between Roundup exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the case value depends on the same factors that drove pre-ruling values: the severity of the cancer, the cost of treatment, lost wages and earning capacity, pain and suffering, and — in cases involving particularly egregious corporate conduct — punitive damages. Missouri does not impose a general statutory cap on product liability damages, and punitive damages are subject to constitutional limitations under Missouri Supreme Court precedent but are not categorically barred.
The honest bottom line. Post-ruling case value depends entirely on whether alternative theories gain traction in lower courts and whether Congress acts to strip the preemption shield. Aggregate Bayer exposure remains substantial if even a fraction of pending claims pivot to viable non-preempted theories — which is precisely why Bayer’s defense team is working so hard to characterize every remaining claim as a preempted failure-to-warn claim in disguise.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
How a Surviving Roundup Case Is Built After Durnell
Here is how a case is actually built after this ruling — the chronological walk from the day you call to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day you call, we send formal preservation demands to Monsanto, Bayer, and any other relevant parties. The letter orders them to freeze internal documents, scientific studies, regulatory correspondence, marketing materials, and any documents related to glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. It also demands preservation of any evidence specific to your exposure history — product batch records, distribution records for your geographic area, and any documents touching the time period of your Roundup use.
Weeks one through four: the evidence inventory. We compile your complete medical record — every pathology report, every treatment note, every billing statement, every pharmacy record. We interview you in detail about your Roundup use: what formulation you used, how often, for how many years, what tasks you were performing, what protective equipment you wore or did not wear, whether you mixed or diluted the product, whether you sprayed it commercially or as a homeowner. We locate and interview witnesses — family members who saw you use it, coworkers who used it alongside you, neighbors who can describe the frequency.
Months one through three: the legal theory is locked in. We evaluate which non-preempted theories fit your facts. Design defect may work if we can show the formulation was unreasonably dangerous and safer alternatives existed. Fraudulent concealment may work if we can tie your exposure period to internal Monsanto documents showing the company knew more than it disclosed. Manufacturing defect may work only if there is evidence of a specific batch problem — which is rare in the Roundup context but not impossible.
Months three through twelve: the expert phase. Expert witnesses must be repositioned for the surviving theories. Oncologists and toxicologists should focus on general causation — glyphosate’s carcinogenic mechanism — and specific causation — the dose-response relationship to your cancer — without relying on labeling deficiencies. The expert must be able to testify that the product was unreasonably dangerous by design, or that the company concealed information it had a duty to disclose, independent of what the label said. This is a different expert presentation than the failure-to-warn cases used, and it requires careful preparation.
Ongoing: discovery and depositions. Discovery should aggressively target internal Monsanto documents showing corporate knowledge of cancer risks beyond what was disclosed to EPA. Emails, research plans, scientific study results, regulatory strategy memos — anything that shows the company knew more than it told the agency. These documents are the backbone of a fraudulent concealment claim, and many of them were already produced in the MDL proceedings. The depositions of Monsanto scientists, regulatory affairs personnel, and corporate decision-makers are where the company’s choices get examined under oath.
The number at the end. If the case survives dismissal and the non-preempted theories hold, the value is built from all of it — the exposure history, the medical damages, the corporate conduct evidence, the expert testimony on causation, and the jury’s assessment of what it all means. The number is not plucked from a formula. It is built, piece by piece, from the evidence.
Your First Steps: The 72-Hour Roadmap
If you have a pending Roundup claim, or if you were considering filing one, here is what you should do in the next 72 hours.
Do not abandon your case based on the headline. Read this page, or call us, or call another lawyer who has read the decision carefully — but do not assume the headline tells the whole story. The ruling is significant, but it is not the end of every Roundup case.
Gather your medical records immediately. Contact your oncologist, your hospital, your pharmacy, and every treating provider. Request complete copies of your medical records — not summaries. These are the foundation of any surviving claim, and they are stable in provider systems but must be compiled and organized now.
Document your exposure history in writing. Write down everything you can remember about your Roundup use: what product you used, where you bought it, how often you used it, how many years, what tasks you were performing, whether you wore gloves or a mask, whether you mixed or diluted it, whether you used it professionally or as a homeowner. Find and save any purchase receipts, credit card statements, or employment records that document your exposure. The longer you wait, the more these details fade.
Identify and contact witnesses. Family members, coworkers, neighbors — anyone who can describe your Roundup use patterns. Get their current contact information. If they are willing, ask them to write down what they remember while it is fresh.
Do not sign anything from Monsanto, Bayer, or any insurance company. If you receive a letter from Monsanto’s defense team citing the Supreme Court ruling and urging you to dismiss your claim, do not respond. Do not sign a release. Do not accept a settlement offer without speaking to a lawyer who has read the decision and can evaluate your surviving theories.
Do not post about your case on social media. Everything you post is discoverable. The defense will look. Keep your online presence clean.
Call a lawyer. The consultation is free. The conversation is confidential. The lawyer should be able to tell you, within the first conversation, whether your case has potential on non-preempted theories, what evidence you need to preserve, and what the timeline looks like. If the lawyer cannot answer those questions, or if the lawyer tells you your case is definitely over without asking about your specific facts, call someone else.
Why This Firm
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take cases in Missouri, working with local counsel where required. We do not claim an office in Missouri, and we do not invent credentials we do not have. What we have is 24-plus years of trial experience, a managing partner who has spent his career in courtrooms, and an associate who used to sit on the other side of the table.
Ralph Manginello has been licensed since November 6, 1998 — 27-plus years. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he reads carefully and writes precisely, and in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision, those skills matter more than ever. He does not file the complaint that worked last year. He reads the new ruling and builds the case that works now.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He was trained in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how claims get valued from the inside — the reserve-setting, the IME-doctor selection, the surveillance, the delay tactics. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family prays in Spanish, your lawyer should be able to talk to you in Spanish.
We work on contingency. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The first call is free, and the conversation is confidential. We have live staff answering 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service. When you call 1-888-ATTY-911 at 2 a.m., a person picks up.
We handle toxic tort claims and wrongful death cases, and we understand the science, the regulatory framework, and the human cost of chemical exposure litigation. If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, we will give you an honest assessment of what your case looks like after Monsanto Co. v. Durnell — not a sales pitch, not false hope, but the truth about what may survive and what may not, and a plan for what to do about it.
Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my Roundup cancer lawsuit over because of the Supreme Court ruling?
Not necessarily. The Supreme Court ruled that state-law failure-to-warn claims — claims that say Monsanto should have put a cancer warning on the Roundup label — are preempted by federal pesticide law when the EPA approved the label without a cancer warning. That is the primary theory most Roundup cases used, and it is now foreclosed. However, other legal theories — including design defect, fraudulent concealment, and breach of express warranty — are not addressed by the ruling and may survive, though their viability is uncertain and will be tested in lower courts. Whether your specific case has a path forward depends on your facts, your exposure history, and the evidence available. Call a lawyer who has read the decision and can evaluate your surviving theories.
What did the Supreme Court actually decide in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell?
The Court held, 7-2, that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) gives the EPA full control over pesticide label content, and because the EPA approved Roundup’s label without a cancer warning, state tort claims seeking to require a cancer warning are preempted. The majority, written by Justice Kavanaugh, reasoned that Congress intended uniformity in pesticide labeling and that state tort claims would disrupt that uniformity. Justice Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Gorsuch, arguing that FIFRA’s separate misbranding provision independently requires adequate warnings regardless of EPA approval.
What is the difference between failure to warn and design defect in a Roundup case?
Failure to warn says the product’s label should have included a cancer warning and did not. Design defect says the product itself — its formulation, its ingredients, its design choices — is unreasonably dangerous regardless of what the label says. The Supreme Court’s ruling preempts the failure-to-warn theory but does not address the design defect theory. A design defect claim challenges the product’s formulation, not its labeling, and may survive preemption if it does not depend on the absence of a cancer warning.
Could Congressional action reopen my Roundup claim?
It is possible but not guaranteed. Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has announced she will introduce legislation stripping pesticide companies of liability protections. The farm bill negotiations have been complicated by disputes over pesticide labeling provisions. If Congress amends FIFRA to remove the preemption shield or clarifies that the misbranding provision operates independently, state failure-to-warn claims could be revived. However, Congressional action is politically contested, uncertain in timing, and could take months or years. No client should wait for a legislative fix that may never come. Build your case on the theories that survive today.
How long do I have to file a Roundup cancer lawsuit in Missouri?
Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims generally runs five years. In toxic tort cases, the discovery rule typically applies — meaning the clock usually starts when you knew or should have known that your cancer was connected to Roundup exposure, not when you last used the product. The Supreme Court’s ruling does not change the statute of limitations. It changes what legal theories are available once you file. If you are approaching the deadline, do not wait — the SOL is a hard deadline, and missing it ends your case regardless of how strong your theories are.
What evidence do I need to preserve for a surviving Roundup claim?
You need your complete medical records — diagnosis, pathology reports, treatment history, prognosis. You need your exposure history — purchase receipts, employment records, usage logs, witness statements about your Roundup use frequency and duration. You need any documents showing Monsanto’s internal knowledge of cancer risks — many of these were produced in the prior MDL proceedings. And you need EPA enforcement records, including the prior fine against Monsanto for mislabeling Roundup on a separate leak-risk issue, which Justice Jackson’s dissent highlighted. The preservation letter goes out the day you call a lawyer.
What is non-Hodgkin lymphoma and how is it connected to Roundup?
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is a cancer of the lymphatic system that arises from lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. NHL encompasses many subtypes, some aggressive and some indolent. Treatment can include chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplants. The connection to Roundup is through glyphosate, the active ingredient. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, while the EPA concluded it is “not likely to be carcinogenic.” This scientific disagreement is part of the evidentiary landscape in any surviving Roundup case.
Will Bayer offer me a settlement after the Supreme Court ruling?
Bayer may offer settlements to some plaintiffs — particularly those with strong causation evidence and well-documented exposure histories — at amounts designed to be better than a dismissed case but lower than the pre-ruling value. Any settlement offer must be evaluated against what your case could be worth on non-preempted theories, not against what it would have been worth before the ruling. Do not accept any settlement offer without consulting a lawyer who has read the decision and can evaluate your surviving claims.
What if I was already offered a settlement before the Supreme Court ruled?
If you accepted a settlement before the ruling, the settlement is likely final — settlements are contracts, and the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling generally does not undo a completed settlement. If you had a pending offer that you had not yet accepted, the landscape has changed, and the offer should be re-evaluated in light of the ruling. If your case was on a trial docket and had not yet been resolved, the ruling affects what theories you can present to a jury.
Can I still sue if I used Roundup years ago but was just diagnosed with cancer?
Possibly. The discovery rule in toxic tort cases generally starts the statute of limitations clock when you knew or should have known that your cancer was connected to Roundup — not when you last used the product. If you were recently diagnosed and recently learned of the potential connection to Roundup, the clock may have just started. But every state’s discovery rule is different, and some states have statutes of repose that impose outer deadlines regardless of discovery. Call a lawyer immediately to evaluate your specific timeline.
Did the Supreme Court say Roundup is safe?
No. The Supreme Court did not evaluate the scientific evidence about whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Court ruled on a legal question — whether federal pesticide labeling law preempts state tort claims — not on a scientific question. The EPA’s conclusion that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic” was part of the legal analysis because it explained why the EPA approved the label without a cancer warning, but the Court did not independently assess whether that conclusion is scientifically correct. The scientific debate — including the IARC classification and the criticism of the EPA’s methodology — remains unresolved.
What should I do if Monsanto’s lawyers send me a letter saying my case is preempted?
Do not respond. Do not sign anything. Do not dismiss your claim. Call a lawyer who has read the Supreme Court decision and can evaluate whether your case has non-preempted theories that may survive. The letter is designed to encourage you to give up without a fight — and for lawyers who did not read the decision carefully, it may work. But the ruling addresses failure-to-warn claims specifically, not every possible product liability theory against Monsanto.
How do I know if my Roundup case has a design defect theory that might survive?
A design defect theory requires evidence that Roundup’s glyphosate formulation was unreasonably dangerous — that the risks of the design outweighed its utility, and that a safer alternative design was feasible. This requires expert testimony from toxicologists and oncologists on general causation (glyphosate’s carcinogenic mechanism) and specific causation (the dose-response relationship to your cancer), without relying on the absence of a label warning. It may also require evidence of safer alternative formulations or active ingredients that could have achieved the same weed-killing result with less cancer risk. A lawyer who understands product liability law and the specifics of the Durnell ruling can evaluate whether your facts support this theory.
What if my family member died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup?
If your loved one used Roundup and died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a wrongful death claim may still be viable on non-preempted theories — design defect, fraudulent concealment, or other claims independent of the label warning. Missouri’s wrongful death statute allows certain family members to bring a claim for the death of a loved one caused by a defective product. The Supreme Court’s ruling preempts the failure-to-warn theory in a wrongful death case just as it does in a personal injury case, but the non-preempted theories are still available. The statute of limitations for wrongful death may be shorter than for personal injury, so do not wait.
Does the Supreme Court ruling affect cases outside Missouri?
Yes — the ruling applies nationwide. The Supreme Court’s interpretation of federal law binds every state and federal court in the country. The underlying Durnell case originated in Missouri state court, but the preemption holding extends to all 50 states, including California (where much of the Roundup litigation has been centered), the federal MDL proceedings in the Northern District of California, and every other jurisdiction where Roundup cases have been filed. No state court can apply a state-law failure-to-warn theory that the Supreme Court has held is preempted by federal law.
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