District of Columbia Roundup Glyphosate Lawsuit: What the Supreme Court Ruling, the Executive Order, and Scotts Miracle-Gro’s Distribution Role Mean for Your Cancer Claim
You are sitting at a kitchen table or in a hospital waiting room, and you just read something that terrified you. The president stood in the Oval Office and praised the company that distributes Roundup to every hardware store and garden center in America. The Supreme Court issued a ruling that news outlets say “strengthened Monsanto’s legal position.” An executive order prioritized glyphosate production under the Defense Production Act. And you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or someone you love does, and you sprayed Roundup in your yard for years — and now you are wondering whether the door just closed on your case.
It did not. But it changed. And the difference between those two things is why you need to read every word on this page.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes toxic tort and catastrophic injury cases, including Roundup and glyphosate cancer claims. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where claims like yours are priced, devalued, and denied — before choosing to sit on your side of the table. We are writing this page to one person: someone who used Roundup, received a cancer diagnosis, and needs to know, in plain English, whether they can still bring a claim after the most significant legal and political developments in the history of this litigation. The answer is yes — but the path is narrower than it was six months ago, and the clock is moving faster than you think.
What Just Happened: Three Events That Reshaped Roundup Litigation in 2026
Three things happened in rapid succession, and together they reshaped the legal landscape for every person in this country who sprayed Roundup and later heard the word “lymphoma” from an oncologist. We are going to take each one apart — not as headlines, but as what they actually mean for a human being with a cancer diagnosis and a product-use history.
First, the Supreme Court ruled. On June 25, 2026, the Court decided Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), and the holding is the single most important development in Roundup litigation since the mass tort began. The Court held that FIFRA’s preemption clause — specifically 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b) — expressly preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label, because such a requirement is “in addition to or different from” the EPA-approved label that federal law requires Monsanto to use. In plain English: if your lawsuit against Monsanto is built on the theory that they should have put a cancer warning on the bottle and did not, the Supreme Court just told you that federal law — the EPA’s approved label — controls what goes on that bottle, and a state court cannot order Monsanto to add something the EPA did not require. That is the failure-to-warn theory, and it is the theory that built the Roundup mass tort. It is now preempted.
Second, the executive order. In February, the president invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritize glyphosate-based herbicide production. The Defense Production Act is a Cold War-era statute that lets the president direct private industry to prioritize certain goods deemed critical to national security or emergency preparedness. The order directed prioritization of glyphosate production — but a production-prioritization directive is not a safety determination. It says “make more of this,” not “this is safe.” The distinction matters enormously, and we will explain why in the section on how defendants will try to use this order and how we answer it.
Third, the political moment. During an Oval Office appearance, the president publicly praised Scotts Miracle-Gro for donating $1 million in products and technical support to restore the White House South Lawn after a UFC event. Scotts Miracle-Gro is not a bystander in the Roundup story. Since 1998, Scotts has served as Monsanto’s — now Bayer’s — exclusive agent for the marketing and distribution of consumer Roundup products in the United States. When you bought a bottle of Roundup at a hardware store, a garden center, or a big-box retailer, it reached that shelf through Scotts. The company that the president praised on national television is the same company that has been the distribution arm for the product at the center of tens of thousands of cancer lawsuits. That is not a legal accusation. It is a fact about the chain of commerce — and it matters for your case.
The Answer Core: Can You Still File a Roundup Cancer Lawsuit After the Supreme Court Ruling?
Yes — but the legal theory that built the mass tort, the one most law firms were filing under, is now blocked in its most common form. Here is what that means, question by question.
Can I still sue Monsanto or Bayer if I used Roundup and got cancer? Yes. The Supreme Court ruling in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell did not dismiss all Roundup litigation. It held that FIFRA’s preemption clause, 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b), expressly preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label. The failure-to-warn theory — the argument that Monsanto should have warned you about cancer risk on the label — is preempted in its label-warning form. But other theories may survive. Design-defect claims, negligent-marketing claims, and claims that do not require a label modification are different legal animals, and their viability post-Durnell is the central strategic question for any new or pending Roundup case.
Does the executive order mean the government says glyphosate is safe? No. The Defense Production Act order prioritized glyphosate production. It did not make a safety determination. The EPA’s position on glyphosate’s carcinogenicity is a separate regulatory matter, governed by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — FIFRA — which we will explain in detail. A production directive and a safety finding are different things, and defendants who try to blur that distinction are making an argument, not stating a fact.
Is it too late to file? That depends on where you live, when you were diagnosed, and when you first connected your cancer to Roundup use. In the District of Columbia, the statute of limitations for personal injury actions — including toxic tort claims like breach of warranty, strict liability, and negligence — is three years from the date the cause of action accrues. Under D.C.’s discovery rule, your claim accrues not when you were exposed to Roundup, but when you knew or should have known, through reasonable diligence, that you had an injury, that Roundup caused it, and that there was some evidence of wrongdoing. That is a legal determination that depends on your specific facts — and it is why the day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
What if someone I love died of cancer after using Roundup? Wrongful death claims in the District of Columbia must be filed within one year of the date of death. That is a separate and shorter deadline, and it is unforgiving. If you are reading this page because a family member died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of Roundup use, you need to pick up the phone now — not next week, not after the estate is settled, not after you “have time to think about it.” One year. That is the window, and it runs from the date of death, not the date you first suspected Roundup was involved.
FIFRA Preemption: The Regulatory Framework That Now Controls Every Roundup Case
To understand what the Supreme Court did in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, you need to understand the regulatory regime that has governed Roundup since before most people had heard of glyphosate. Glyphosate is regulated by the EPA under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticate Act, 7 U.S.C. § 136 et seq. FIFRA is a federal statute that requires every pesticide sold or distributed in the United States to be registered with the EPA. The registration process requires the manufacturer to submit a complete copy of the pesticide’s labeling, a statement of all claims to be made for it, and any directions for its use. The EPA reviews the labeling, the toxicological data, the use instructions, and the safety claims — and if it approves the registration, the manufacturer is required to use that exact EPA-approved label.
“Except as provided by this subchapter, no person in any State may distribute or sell to any person any pesticide that is not registered under this subchapter.” — 7 U.S.C. § 136a(a)
That is the FIFRA registration requirement, and it is the foundation of the preemption ruling. The statute also contains a preemption clause — 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b) — that says states cannot impose labeling requirements that are “in addition to or different from” the EPA-approved label. For decades, plaintiffs in Roundup cases argued that this clause did not preempt state-law failure-to-warn claims because the claims were about Monsanto’s duty to warn, not about the label itself. The Supreme Court rejected that distinction in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell. The Court held that a state-law failure-to-warn claim that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label is expressly preempted by § 136v(b), because requiring a cancer warning is requiring labeling “in addition to or different from” the EPA-approved label.
Here is what that means in human terms. If your case is built on the argument that Monsanto should have put a cancer warning on the Roundup bottle, the Supreme Court has said that federal law — the EPA’s decision about what goes on that label — controls, and a state court cannot override it. The EPA has historically taken the position that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” The International Agency for Research on Cancer — IARC, an arm of the World Health Organization — classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, in Volume 112 of its monograph series. That IARC classification has been the scientific anchor of Roundup litigation. But the EPA’s position is the one that controls the label, and the Supreme Court has said the label is off-limits to state-law warning claims.
Now here is the part that separates a lawyer who read the headline from one who read the opinion. The Durnell ruling addressed failure-to-warn claims that require a label modification. It did not necessarily address every theory of liability that a Roundup plaintiff might pursue. Design-defect claims — the theory that Roundup was unreasonably dangerous in its formulation or design, independent of what the label said — are a different legal theory. Negligent-marketing claims — the theory that Monsanto marketed Roundup as safe in ways that went beyond the label, through advertising, promotional materials, and consumer-facing communications — may present different preemption questions. And claims against entities in the distribution chain — like Scotts Miracle-Gro, which held out Roundup as safe for consumer use through its own marketing and distribution role — may raise distinct issues that the Durnell ruling did not resolve. We are not telling you these theories are guaranteed to survive. We are telling you that the lawyer who reads Durnell as “all Roundup cases are dead” is the lawyer who has not read the opinion carefully — and that lawyer is not the one you want handling your cancer claim.
The Defense Production Act Order: Why a Production Directive Is Not a Safety Finding
When the February executive order invoked the Defense Production Act to prioritize glyphosate-based herbicide production, defense lawyers across the country took notice. Here is why — and here is why you should not be frightened by it.
The Defense Production Act lets the president direct private industry to prioritize production of certain goods. It is a supply-chain tool, not a safety-regulation mechanism. When the president says “make more glyphosate,” that is a statement about industrial production capacity — about keeping supply chains running, about agricultural output, about whatever policy goal the administration is pursuing. It is not a statement that glyphosate is safe, and it is not a statement that Roundup does not cause cancer. The EPA’s safety determinations are made through the FIFRA registration process, which involves toxicological review, risk assessment, and label approval — a process that is statutorily separate from the Defense Production Act.
But defense lawyers will try to blur that line. They will argue that the executive order reflects federal policy endorsement of glyphosate safety — that the government would not prioritize production of a dangerous product. That is a political argument dressed as a legal one, and it collapses on examination. The federal government has prioritized production of many products whose safety was contested or subsequently litigated. A production priority is a statement about supply, not about safety. The FIFRA registration process — not the Defense Production Act — is the mechanism by which the federal government makes safety determinations about pesticides, and that process operates through the EPA under statutory standards that have nothing to do with the DPA.
There is another dimension to this. The DPA contains provisions that may immunize entities from certain damages claims when acting in response to a prioritization order. The precise scope of that immunity, and whether it extends to product-liability claims arising from the manufacture or distribution of a prioritized product, is a legal question that has not been definitively answered in the Roundup context. What we can tell you is this: a production-prioritization order does not rewrite FIFRA, does not override state tort law outside the preemption clause the Supreme Court identified, and does not grant blanket immunity to manufacturers or distributors for the consequences of their products. If a defense lawyer tells you the executive order means you cannot sue, that lawyer is making an argument, not stating a settled legal rule — and the argument is one we are prepared to answer.
Scotts Miracle-Gro: The Distributor in the Chain of Commerce
When the president praised Scotts Miracle-Gro for restoring the White House South Lawn, most people heard a story about a lawn-care company donating to a good cause. We heard something different — and if you used Roundup, you need to hear it too.
Since 1998, Scotts Miracle-Gro has been Monsanto’s — now Bayer’s — exclusive agent for the marketing and distribution of consumer Roundup products in the United States. That means every bottle of consumer Roundup that reached a retail shelf in this country passed through Scotts’ distribution network. Scotts did not manufacture glyphosate. Scotts did not formulate Roundup. But Scotts was the company that put the product in front of consumers — that marketed it, that promoted it, that held it out as safe for use in your yard, your garden, your children’s play area. And in product-liability law, the entity that markets and distributes a product — that holds it out to consumers as safe — is part of the chain of commerce, and in certain jurisdictions, that entity can face liability under stream-of-commerce and distribution-channel theories.
Here is why Scotts matters to your case. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell addressed failure-to-warn claims against Monsanto that would require a label modification. It did not necessarily address claims against Scotts — a separate entity in the distribution chain — whose marketing and promotional activities may not be governed by the same FIFRA preemption analysis. Scotts’ own marketing materials, its own promotional claims, its own consumer-facing communications about Roundup’s safety — these are potentially distinct from the EPA-approved label, and claims based on them may raise different preemption questions than the label-warning claims the Supreme Court addressed.
We are not telling you that Scotts is liable. We are not telling you that claims against Scotts are guaranteed to survive preemption. We are telling you that a lawyer who looks at the Roundup landscape post-Durnell and sees only one defendant — Monsanto — and only one theory — failure-to-warn — is a lawyer who has not mapped the full chain of commerce. The manufacturer, the distributor, the marketer, the retailer — each is a separate entity, each played a separate role, and each may face different legal exposure depending on the theory of liability and the jurisdiction. Scotts has been the exclusive consumer-distribution arm for Roundup since 1998. That is a fact about the chain of commerce, and it is a fact that matters.
The Defendant Structure: Bayer, Monsanto, and the Corporate Family
Roundup litigation is not a lawsuit against a company. It is a lawsuit against a corporate family — a structure built across national borders, through acquisitions and reorganizations, with layers of entities that each play a different role. Understanding that structure is the first step in understanding who is responsible and where the resources exist to compensate the people this product has injured.
Monsanto Company is the original manufacturer of Roundup. Monsanto developed glyphosate in the 1970s, brought Roundup to market, and built it into one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. In 2018, Bayer AG — the German pharmaceutical and agricultural conglomerate — acquired Monsanto for $63 billion. The acquisition brought Monsanto’s product portfolio, including Roundup, under Bayer’s corporate umbrella. Following the acquisition, Bayer has faced the full weight of Roundup litigation — tens of thousands of claims alleging that glyphosate-based Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other hematologic cancers, and that Monsanto knew or should have known about the risk and failed to warn consumers.
Bayer’s response to the litigation has been a combination of individual case defenses, global settlement negotiations, and — now — the Supreme Court preemption ruling. The company has engaged in claims-resolution programs designed to resolve qualifying claims through structured settlement processes rather than individual trials. Those programs have produced resolutions across a wide range — from individual settlements to multi-billion-dollar global settlement frameworks — but no individual case value can be assigned without evaluating the specific diagnosis, exposure history, and jurisdiction of each claimant.
Scotts Miracle-Gro sits in a different position in the corporate structure. Scotts is not a subsidiary of Bayer or Monsanto. It is an independent company that entered into an exclusive distribution and marketing agreement with Monsanto in 1998 — an agreement that has survived the Bayer acquisition and continues to govern the consumer Roundup distribution channel. That independent-agency relationship means Scotts is a separate defendant with separate legal exposure, separate insurance coverage, and separate defenses. It also means that a lawyer who names only Monsanto in a Roundup lawsuit may be leaving a defendant — and a source of recovery — on the table.
The federal government is a third presence in this landscape, but not as a defendant. The executive order invoking the Defense Production Act is a policy directive, and policy decisions by the federal government do not create tort liability absent a specific statutory waiver of sovereign immunity and a concrete connection to a specific injury. The government is part of the regulatory and political backdrop, not a party to your lawsuit.
District of Columbia Law: Your Deadline and Your Rights
If your Roundup exposure or your cancer diagnosis connects you to the District of Columbia — because you lived here, worked here, were diagnosed here, or used Roundup here — D.C. law governs your deadline. Here is what that law says, precisely, with the citations you can verify.
The District of Columbia applies a three-year statute of limitations to personal injury actions. The controlling provision is D.C. Code § 12-301(8), which provides a three-year period for actions “for which a limitation is not otherwise specially prescribed.” Roundup and glyphosate toxic tort claims — including breach of warranty, strict liability, and negligence claims — fall within this three-year window.
But the three-year clock does not start when you sprayed Roundup. It starts when your cause of action accrues — and under D.C.’s discovery rule, accrual happens when you know or, by the exercise of reasonable diligence, should know three things: (1) that you have an injury, (2) that Roundup caused it in fact, and (3) that there is some evidence of wrongdoing. This rule comes from Burns v. Bell, 409 A.2d 614 (D.C. 1979), and Nelson v. American Red Cross, 26 F.3d 193 (1994). In the Roundup context, that means the clock may start when you were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma — or it may start later, when you first learned that your cancer could be connected to glyphosate exposure. That is a fact-specific determination, and it is one of the most important questions a lawyer will answer when evaluating your claim.
If someone you love died of cancer after using Roundup, the deadline is different — and shorter. Wrongful death claims in the District of Columbia must be brought within one year of the date of death, under D.C. Code § 16-2702. One year. Not three. And the discovery rule may or may not extend that deadline — wrongful death statutes are typically interpreted more strictly than personal injury statutes, and the one-year clock often runs from the date of death regardless of when the family discovered the connection to Roundup. If you are reading this page because a family member died, you do not have the luxury of time. You have one year, and the clock is already running.
There is also the question of comparative fault — your own share of responsibility, if any, for your exposure. The District of Columbia follows a comparative-negligence framework in which your own share of fault, if established, reduces your recovery, and if that share is substantial enough, it can bar recovery entirely. We state this as the durable principle because the precise bar percentage is a legal determination that depends on current D.C. case law, and we will not assert a specific percentage unless we can confirm it is the current rule. What we can tell you is this: in a Roundup case, comparative fault is rarely the defense’s strongest play. You used a product that the manufacturer and distributor told you was safe. You followed the directions on the label. If the defense tries to pin fault on you for using a product as directed, that is an argument we are prepared to answer — and the answer is that a consumer who follows a product’s instructions is not negligent for trusting the representations of the company that made and marketed it.
The Medicine: Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Glyphosate Exposure
We need to talk about the cancer. Not as a legal theory — as a disease that is happening to a human being, and as the injury your case is built on.
The cancer most commonly associated with Roundup exposure in the litigation is non-Hodgkin lymphoma — NHL for short. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a group of blood cancers that originate in the lymphatic system, which is part of the body’s immune system. NHL begins in white blood cells called lymphocytes, specifically B cells or T cells, and it can manifest in lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow, or other lymphoid tissues. There are more than 70 subtypes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and they range from indolent — slow-growing, manageable for years — to aggressive, requiring immediate and intensive treatment.
The connection between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma is the central scientific question of the Roundup mass tort, and it has two sides. The International Agency for Research on Cancer — IARC — classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, in Volume 112 of its monograph series. IARC is an agency of the World Health Organization, and its monographs are considered the gold standard of carcinogenicity classification worldwide. The IARC classification was based on a review of the available scientific evidence, including epidemiological studies of agricultural workers exposed to glyphosate and laboratory studies of glyphosate’s mechanisms of action. The EPA, by contrast, has historically taken the position that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans” — a position that has been the subject of scientific debate and that has shifted with administration changes.
The scientific conflict between IARC and the EPA is not just an academic disagreement. It is the fault line that runs through every Roundup case. Plaintiffs’ experts — board-certified oncologists, toxicologists, and epidemiologists — rely on the IARC classification, the epidemiological literature, and Monsanto’s own internal research to argue that glyphosate exposure can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. Defendants’ experts argue that the evidence is insufficient, that the EPA’s position controls, and that the IARC classification is an outlier. The jury’s assessment of that conflict — which side’s experts are more credible, which studies are more reliable, which interpretation of the data is more sound — is what decides a Roundup case at trial.
But you are not a jury. You are a person with cancer, or the family member of one. And from that perspective, here is what matters. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma has a latency period — the time between exposure to a carcinogen and the development of detectable cancer. For NHL, that latency period can be years, even decades. That means the Roundup you sprayed ten or twenty years ago may be the exposure that contributed to the diagnosis you received last month. It also means that documenting your exposure history — when you used Roundup, how often, for how many years, in what quantities — is the foundation of your case. Not your medical records alone. Not the product label alone. Your exposure history, reconstructed from your own memory, your purchase records, your gardening habits, your work history if you used Roundup professionally.
The treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma depends on the subtype and the stage. It can include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy, stem cell transplants, and in some cases watchful waiting for indolent forms. The costs are enormous — not just the medical bills, which can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars even with insurance, but the lost wages, the diminished earning capacity, the physical and emotional toll of treatment, the impact on family relationships, and the fear that lives in every scan, every blood test, every follow-up appointment. If the cancer is in remission, that fear does not leave — it just quiets. If the cancer is active or recurring, the fear is a constant companion. All of this is compensable. All of this is part of what a Roundup case is worth.
What Your Case Is Worth: Damages in Roundup Cancer Claims
No lawyer can tell you what your case is worth without reviewing your medical records, your exposure history, your diagnosis, your treatment course, and the jurisdiction where your claim will be filed. Anyone who gives you a number on a website or in a phone call before reviewing those facts is not giving you a valuation — they are giving you a sales pitch. What we can tell you is the framework — the categories of damages that a Roundup cancer claim can seek, and how a real number is built from them.
Economic damages are the measurable financial losses. They include past and future medical expenses — the cost of diagnosis, treatment, hospitalization, medication, follow-up care, and ongoing monitoring. They include lost wages — the income you lost during treatment and recovery. And they include lost earning capacity — the reduction in your ability to earn income in the future, whether because of ongoing treatment, physical limitations, or the psychological impact of living with cancer. For a person diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the economic damages alone can be staggering — and they are the floor, not the ceiling, of what a case is worth.
Non-economic damages are the human losses that no receipt captures. Pain and suffering — the physical pain of the disease and its treatment, the neuropathy from chemotherapy, the exhaustion, the nausea, the nights in the hospital. Emotional distress — the fear of recurrence, the anxiety before every scan, the depression that can accompany a cancer diagnosis. Loss of quality of life — the activities you can no longer do, the plans you had to cancel, the relationships that changed because cancer changes everything. Loss of consortium — for your spouse or partner, the loss of the companionship, intimacy, and shared life that the disease has taken. These damages are real, they are compensable, and in a case involving a cancer diagnosis, they are often the largest component of the recovery.
Punitive damages are a separate category — designed not to compensate but to punish and deter. In the Roundup context, plaintiffs have sought punitive damages based on allegations that Monsanto’s internal documents showed awareness of cancer risks that the company did not disclose to consumers. Whether punitive damages are available, and in what amount, depends on the jurisdiction where the claim is filed and the evidence of the defendant’s conduct. The Durnell ruling’s impact on punitive damages tied to failure-to-warn theories is an open question — but punitive damages tied to other theories of liability, such as design defect or negligent marketing, may present different questions.
Here is how a real number is built. A life-care planner — a specialized expert who constructs a projected cost stream for ongoing medical needs — quantifies the future medical expenses in today’s dollars. A forensic economist reduces that cost stream to present value — what it is worth now, accounting for inflation and the time value of money. The economic and non-economic damages are then combined, and the total is the figure that drives settlement negotiations and trial presentations. In the broader Roundup litigation landscape, comparable cases nationally have resolved across a wide range — from individual settlements to multi-billion-dollar global settlement frameworks. But no valuation can be assigned to your case without evaluating your specific diagnosis, your exposure duration and intensity, your jurisdiction, and the post-Durnell legal landscape. That evaluation is what a free consultation is for.
If someone you love died of cancer attributed to Roundup exposure, wrongful death claims seek different damages — the financial support the deceased would have provided, the loss of companionship and guidance, the medical expenses incurred before death, and in some jurisdictions the pain and suffering the deceased experienced before dying. Survival actions, where available, preserve the claims the deceased person could have brought had they survived. The damages in a wrongful death case are measured differently than in a personal injury case, and they require a different legal analysis — which is another reason the one-year wrongful death deadline in D.C. makes timing critical.
Evidence Preservation: What to Save and What Disappears
Evidence in a Roundup case does not disappear in the way that a truck’s electronic logs disappear — overwritten in six months, gone forever. But it does erode, and the erosion starts the day you stop gathering it. Here is what exists, who holds it, and what you need to preserve.
Your exposure history is the first and most important piece of evidence, and it lives in your own memory, your own records, and your own home. If you still have Roundup containers — the bottles, the spray wands, the concentrate jugs — keep them. Do not throw them away. Do not return them to the store. Those containers are physical evidence — they identify the specific product formulation, the label version, the manufacturer information, and the purchase channel. If you have receipts for Roundup purchases — from hardware stores, garden centers, big-box retailers, online orders — find them and save them. If you used a store loyalty card or credit card, the purchase history may be retrievable from the retailer. If you used Roundup professionally — as a landscaper, a groundskeeper, a farmer, a maintenance worker — your employment records, work orders, and payroll history may document the exposure.
Your medical records are the second pillar. The pathology report that confirmed your non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis — the specific subtype, the stage, the cell type — is the medical foundation of your case. Your treatment records — chemotherapy regimens, immunotherapy protocols, radiation plans, hospitalization records, follow-up scans, blood work — document the course and cost of your disease. Your treating oncologist’s records are the primary medical evidence, and they need to be complete — not just the summary notes, but the full chart, the lab reports, the imaging studies, the medication records. If your oncologist has not connected your cancer to glyphosate exposure in your records, that is not necessarily a problem — causation is a legal and scientific question, not a clinical one — but your treatment history needs to be documented in full.
Monsanto and Bayer internal documents — the emails, studies, risk assessments, and internal communications that have been produced in existing Roundup litigation — are the third category. These documents, which have been central to failure-to-warn and punitive damages theories, are subject to existing litigation holds in pending cases. For new claimants, access to these documents depends on discovery in active proceedings or production in multidistrict litigation. We do not control those documents. But we know they exist, we know what they generally contain, and we know how to seek access to them through the discovery process — or through coordination with firms that have active Roundup cases in which the documents have been produced.
Scotts Miracle-Gro distribution and marketing records are a fourth category. Scotts’ role as exclusive consumer distributor since 1998 means the company holds records about the marketing, promotion, and distribution of consumer Roundup products — records that may be relevant to distribution-channel liability theories and to claims based on Scotts’ own representations about Roundup’s safety. Corporate document retention policies vary, and litigation holds should be issued promptly in any new filing to prevent the routine destruction of relevant records.
EPA FIFRA registration records and glyphosate risk assessments are public record — they are the regulatory file on glyphosate, including the registration materials, the toxicological studies, the risk assessments, and the correspondence between the EPA and Monsanto. These records are relevant to preemption defenses and to the adequacy of the warnings, and the DPA executive order context may be cited by defendants as evidence of federal policy. But regulatory records do not erode — they are public and published, and they remain available regardless of when your claim is filed.
The IARC monograph on glyphosate — Volume 112, published in 2015 — is the foundational general-causation document linking glyphosate to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It is published scientific record, not subject to decay, and it is central to expert testimony on specific causation. It is not evidence that will disappear. But your ability to connect your specific exposure to your specific cancer — through your purchase records, your use history, your medical records, and expert testimony — is evidence that lives in your documents and your memory, and it needs to be documented now, while it is fresh, before time blurs the details.
The Insurance and Defense Playbook: What They Will Try
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to value, delay, and deny claims. He knows the plays because he ran them. Here are the plays the defense will run in a Roundup case post-Durnell — and here is the counter to each one.
Play 1: “The Supreme Court killed all Roundup cases.” This is the first thing you will hear — from the defense, from insurance adjusters, and unfortunately from some lawyers who read the headline and not the opinion. The counter: Monsanto Co. v. Durnell addressed failure-to-warn claims that require a label modification. It did not address every theory of liability, every defendant, or every jurisdiction. Design-defect claims, negligent-marketing claims, and claims against distribution-chain entities like Scotts present different legal questions. The lawyer who tells you all Roundup cases are dead is either misinformed or is hoping you will go away quietly. Do not go away. Get a second opinion from a lawyer who has read the opinion.
Play 2: “The executive order means the government says glyphosate is safe.” The defense will try to use the DPA order as a federal safety endorsement. The counter: a production-prioritization directive is not a safety determination. The EPA’s safety position is made through the FIFRA registration process, not through the Defense Production Act. The executive order says “make more,” not “this is safe.” That is a distinction the defense will try to blur and that we will sharpen — because a jury understands the difference between a supply-chain directive and a safety finding, and so does a judge.
Play 3: “You waited too long.” The defense will argue that the statute of limitations has expired — that you knew or should have known about the connection between Roundup and cancer years ago, when the IARC classification came out in 2015 or when the first Roundup verdicts made national news. The counter: the discovery rule in the District of Columbia, established in Burns v. Bell and reaffirmed in Nelson v. American Red Cross, says your claim accrues when you knew or should have known of your injury, its cause, and some evidence of wrongdoing. If you were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and did not connect it to Roundup until recently, the accrual date may be later than the defense claims. This is a fact-specific determination — and it is one of the first things we evaluate when you call.
Play 4: The quick settlement offer. If the defense thinks your case has value, they may offer a fast settlement — one that sounds like a lot of money but is a fraction of what your case is worth. This is the oldest play in the insurance playbook: get the release signed before the claimant hires a lawyer, before the medical records are complete, before the life-care planner quantifies the future costs, before the forensic economist calculates the present value. The counter: do not sign anything from an insurance company or claims-resolution program without speaking to a lawyer first. Not because every offer is bad — some are fair — but because you cannot evaluate an offer without knowing what your case is actually worth, and you cannot know what your case is worth without the full picture.
Play 5: The surveillance and social-media play. In any cancer case, the defense may monitor the claimant’s social media, look for photographs of physical activity, and try to build an argument that the cancer is not as debilitating as claimed. The counter: assume you are being watched. Set your social media to private. Do not post about your diagnosis, your treatment, your physical activities, or your case. Do not discuss your case with anyone except your lawyer and your doctors. This is not paranoia — it is standard claims-handling practice, and what you should not say to an insurance adjuster applies equally to what you should not post online.
Play 6: The “preemption covers everything” argument. Post-Durnell, the defense will push the preemption doctrine as far as it can go — arguing that any claim related to Roundup’s safety is preempted, not just label-warning claims. The counter: preemption is a specific legal doctrine with specific limits, and the Supreme Court’s ruling addressed a specific type of claim. The defense will try to expand the ruling’s reach; our job is to hold the line at what the opinion actually held and to pursue theories that fall outside its scope. That requires a lawyer who has read the opinion, understands preemption doctrine, and knows how to plead around it.
How We Build a Roundup Case: The Proof Story
Here is how a Roundup case is actually built — not the sales version, not the brochure version, the real version, step by step.
It starts with the intake. When you call, we ask the questions that determine whether you have a viable claim in the post-Durnell landscape. What is your diagnosis? When were you diagnosed? What subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma? What stage? What treatment have you undergone? When did you first use Roundup? How did you use it — spraying weeds in your yard, professional landscaping, agricultural application? How often — weekly, monthly, seasonally? For how many years? Did you use the concentrate or the ready-to-use spray? Did you wear protective equipment? When did you first learn that Roundup might be connected to cancer? Have you ever spoken to another lawyer about this? Have you signed anything — a release, a settlement agreement, a claims-program enrollment?
If the intake suggests a viable claim, the next step is evidence gathering. We collect your medical records — the full chart, not just the summary. We collect your exposure history — through a structured interview that documents your Roundup use in detail, supplemented by purchase records, employment records, and any physical evidence like product containers. We collect your financial records — medical bills, pay stubs, tax returns, insurance statements — to document the economic impact of your disease.
Then comes the legal analysis. This is where the Durnell ruling and the post-Durnell landscape matter most. We evaluate which theories of liability are viable for your specific case, in your specific jurisdiction, against the specific defendants in your chain of commerce. If failure-to-warn claims are preempted in your jurisdiction, we evaluate whether design-defect claims, negligent-marketing claims, or distribution-channel claims against Scotts or other entities present viable alternatives. This analysis is case-specific — it depends on your jurisdiction’s preemption doctrine, your jurisdiction’s product-liability law, and the specific evidence available to support each theory.
If the legal analysis supports a claim, we file. The complaint is drafted to plead the surviving theories — not the preempted ones, unless we are preserving them for appellate challenge — and to name the defendants in the chain of commerce. In a Roundup case, that may include Monsanto/Bayer as the manufacturer and Scotts as the distributor, along with any other entities in the distribution chain whose role and potential liability the evidence supports.
After filing comes discovery — the process by which both sides exchange evidence, take depositions, and build their cases. In Roundup litigation, discovery is where the internal documents come out — the Monsanto emails, studies, and risk assessments that have been produced in existing cases and that may be accessible through discovery coordination. Discovery is also where the defense’s experts are deposed — where their scientific opinions are tested, their methodology is challenged, and their conflicts of interest are exposed.
Then comes the expert work. In a Roundup case, the plaintiff’s expert team typically includes a board-certified oncologist who can testify that glyphosate exposure can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma — the general-causation opinion, anchored in the IARC classification and the epidemiological literature. It includes a toxicologist who can testify about the mechanism by which glyphosate may cause cancer — the cellular and molecular pathways. And it includes an exposure-reconstruction expert who can testify about your specific exposure — the duration, the intensity, the dose — based on your use history and purchase records. The defense will have its own experts, and the battle of experts is the heart of a Roundup trial.
Then comes the resolution — settlement or trial. Most Roundup cases resolve through settlement, often through Bayer’s claims-resolution programs or through mediation. But the willingness of the defense to offer a fair settlement depends on their assessment of what would happen at trial — and that assessment depends on the strength of your evidence, the quality of your experts, the viability of your legal theories, and the reputation of your lawyers. A case that is prepared for trial settles for more than a case that is prepared for settlement. That is not a slogan — it is a fact about how claims valuation works, and it is the reason we prepare every case as if it is going to trial.
Your First Steps: What to Do Right Now
If you used Roundup and were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or another cancer potentially linked to glyphosate exposure, here is what you should do — and what you should not do — starting today.
Do document your Roundup use. Write down everything you can remember: when you started using Roundup, how often you used it, what size containers you bought, where you bought them, what you used them for, whether you used the ready-to-use spray or the concentrate, whether you mixed it with water, whether you wore gloves or a mask, whether you sprayed it in areas where children or pets played. This is your exposure history, and it is the foundation of your case. Memory fades. Write it down now.
Do preserve physical evidence. If you still have Roundup containers, keep them. Store them safely. Do not use them. Do not throw them away. If you have receipts, purchase records, or order confirmations, save them. If you used a store loyalty card or credit card for Roundup purchases, the purchase history may be retrievable — but you need to request it before the retailer’s retention period expires.
Do gather your medical records. Request your complete medical chart from your oncologist, your hospital, and any other treating providers. You are entitled to your records. The pathology report, the treatment records, the imaging studies, the lab reports — all of it. Keep it organized. Make copies.
Do not sign anything from an insurance company, a claims-resolution program, or anyone representing Monsanto, Bayer, or Scotts. If you receive a settlement offer, a release, a claims-program enrollment form, or any document that asks you to waive your right to sue — do not sign it. Call a lawyer first. The document may be perfectly legitimate. But you cannot evaluate it without knowing what your case is worth, and you cannot know what your case is worth without a full evaluation.
Do not give a recorded statement. If an insurance adjuster or claims representative asks you to “just tell us what happened” on a recorded call, decline. That recording is designed to be used against you — to lock you into a version of events before you have had time to reconstruct your exposure history, before you have reviewed your medical records, before you have spoken to a lawyer. You are not required to give a recorded statement to pursue a claim. If they insist, tell them you will call them back — and then call us.
Do not post about your case on social media. Do not post about your diagnosis, your treatment, your Roundup use, your lawsuit, or your physical activities. Assume everything you post will be read by the defense. Set your accounts to private. Tell your family members to do the same.
Do call a lawyer. Not next week. Not after your next appointment. Now. The statute of limitations is running — three years for personal injury in D.C., one year for wrongful death — and the discovery rule does not guarantee that the clock starts when you think it does. The legal landscape has changed, and the theories that survive Durnell require careful analysis that depends on your specific facts. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still file a Roundup cancer lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruling in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell?
Yes, but the legal landscape has changed significantly. The Supreme Court held on June 25, 2026, that FIFRA’s preemption clause — 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b) — expressly preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label. The failure-to-warn theory in its label-warning form is preempted. Other theories — including design-defect claims, negligent-marketing claims, and distribution-channel claims against entities like Scotts Miracle-Gro — may present different preemption questions and may remain viable depending on your jurisdiction and the specific facts of your case. You need a lawyer who has read the opinion and understands which theories survive.
What did the Supreme Court actually decide in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell?
The Court held that FIFRA’s preemption clause, 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b), expressly preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to Roundup’s label, because such a requirement is “in addition to or different from” the EPA-approved label that federal law requires Monsanto to use. The ruling is specific to failure-to-warn claims that require a label modification. It did not dismiss all Roundup litigation, and it did not address every theory of liability or every defendant in the chain of commerce.
Does the Defense Production Act executive order mean I cannot sue?
No. The DPA executive order prioritized glyphosate-based herbicide production — a supply-chain directive, not a safety determination. The order does not modify FIFRA labeling requirements, does not override state tort law outside the preemption clause the Supreme Court identified, and does not grant blanket immunity to manufacturers or distributors. Defense lawyers may try to use the order as evidence of federal policy endorsement, but a production-prioritization directive and a safety finding are different things, and the distinction matters.
How long do I have to file a Roundup cancer claim?
In the District of Columbia, personal injury claims — including toxic tort claims like breach of warranty, strict liability, and negligence — must be filed within three years from the date the cause of action accrues, under D.C. Code § 12-301(8). Under D.C.’s discovery rule, your claim accrues when you knew or should have known of your injury, its cause in fact, and some evidence of wrongdoing. Wrongful death claims must be filed within one year of the date of death, under D.C. Code § 16-2702. Other states have different deadlines. The specific deadline for your claim depends on where you live, where your exposure occurred, and where your claim will be filed — and it is a question that must be answered by a lawyer familiar with your jurisdiction’s tort law.
What types of cancer are linked to Roundup exposure?
The cancer most commonly associated with Roundup exposure in the litigation is non-Hodgkin lymphoma — a group of blood cancers that originate in the lymphatic system. Other hematologic cancers have also been alleged in some cases. The scientific connection between glyphosate and cancer is contested — the IARC classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015, while the EPA has historically taken the position that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Your specific diagnosis, your pathology report, and your exposure history are the starting points for evaluating whether your cancer may be connected to Roundup use.
Is Scotts Miracle-Gro liable for Roundup injuries?
Scotts Miracle-Gro has been Monsanto’s — now Bayer’s — exclusive agent for consumer Roundup distribution in the United States since 1998. That role places Scotts in the chain of commerce — the company marketed, promoted, and distributed consumer Roundup products to retailers nationwide. Whether Scotts faces liability in a given case depends on the jurisdiction, the theory of liability, and the evidence of Scotts’ own role in holding out Roundup as safe for consumer use. Distribution-channel and stream-of-commerce liability theories are available in certain jurisdictions, though their viability post-Durnell is an open question that requires case-specific legal analysis.
What evidence do I need for a Roundup cancer claim?
The core evidence is your exposure history — when, how often, and for how long you used Roundup — documented through your own records, purchase histories, product containers, and employment records if you used Roundup professionally. Your medical records — the pathology report confirming your diagnosis, your treatment records, your imaging studies, your lab reports — document the injury. Monsanto and Bayer internal documents, produced in existing litigation, may be accessible through discovery. The IARC monograph on glyphosate is published scientific record and is central to expert testimony on causation. The strongest cases have detailed exposure documentation, complete medical records, and expert testimony linking the specific exposure to the specific diagnosis.
How much is a Roundup cancer case worth?
No honest lawyer can give you a number without reviewing your medical records, your exposure history, your diagnosis, and your jurisdiction. Comparable Roundup cases nationally have resolved across a wide range — from individual settlements to multi-billion-dollar global settlement frameworks. Your case’s value depends on the specific cancer diagnosis, the duration and intensity of your Roundup exposure, the treatment you have undergone and will need in the future, the impact on your earning capacity, the pain and suffering you have experienced, and the post-Durnell legal landscape in your jurisdiction. A case value evaluation is part of what a free consultation provides.
Do I need a lawyer for a Roundup claim?
Yes. The Roundup litigation landscape has never been more complex. The Supreme Court’s preemption ruling, the executive order, the evolving status of global settlement programs, and the jurisdiction-specific questions about which theories survive — these are not issues a person can handle alone. A lawyer who understands FIFRA preemption, who has read Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, who knows the chain of commerce from manufacturer to distributor to retailer, and who can evaluate whether your claim falls within the surviving theories is not a luxury. In this landscape, a lawyer is the difference between a claim that is filed correctly and a claim that is dismissed on preemption grounds before it begins.
What if I was diagnosed years ago — is it too late to file?
Maybe, maybe not. The District of Columbia’s discovery rule, established in Burns v. Bell, 409 A.2d 614 (D.C. 1979), says your claim accrues when you knew or should have known of your injury, its cause, and some evidence of wrongdoing — not when you were exposed to Roundup. If you were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma years ago but only recently learned that Roundup may have caused it, the accrual date may be more recent than your diagnosis date. But this is a fact-specific determination, and the defense will argue that you should have known earlier — when the IARC classification was published, when the first Roundup verdicts made national news, when the connection became widely reported. You need a lawyer to evaluate your specific accrual date, and you need to make that evaluation now — not later.
Why Attorney911: Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court — admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, and licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he reads Supreme Court opinions the way they were meant to be read — for what they actually say, not what the headline says they say. When Monsanto Co. v. Durnell came down, Ralph read the opinion, not the press release. The difference between those two things is the difference between a lawyer who tells you “all Roundup cases are dead” and a lawyer who tells you which theories survive, which defendants remain reachable, and how your case is built in the post-Durnell landscape.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their valuation software decided how to price, delay, and deny claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical records are complete, and how the defense frames preemption to scare claimants away. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — because the family that sprayed Roundup in their yard for twenty years and then heard the word “linfoma” from a doctor deserves to understand their rights in the language they think in.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. Your first consultation is free, and it is confidential. You will speak to a live person, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service. The call costs you nothing. The information you receive costs you nothing. The decision about what to do next is yours.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The firm has recovered more than $50 million for clients over its history — including a $5 million-plus brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million-plus truck-crash recovery. Those are not Roundup numbers. They are proof that we know how to build, value, and resolve catastrophic-injury cases — and the skills that produced those results are the same skills we bring to a toxic tort claim: the ability to read the law, marshal the evidence, hire the right experts, and stand across the table from a corporate defendant and refuse to accept a fraction of what the case is worth.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. The Supreme Court ruling, the executive order, and the settlement-program landscape are evolving, and the information on this page is current as of the date of publication. If you used Roundup and were diagnosed with cancer, or if someone you love was, the most important thing you can do is talk to a lawyer who has read the ruling, understands the surviving theories, and can evaluate your specific claim. That evaluation is what the free consultation is for.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. That is 1-888-288-9911. Or contact us online. We will answer. We will listen. We will tell you the truth about what your case is, what it is worth, and what we can do about it — in English or in Spanish.
Hablamos Español.