Missouri Roundup Lawsuit After the Supreme Court Ruling — Your Case Is Not Over
You saw the headline. Bayer won at the Supreme Court. The stock jumped nineteen percent in a single day. Maybe you felt your stomach drop — because you used Roundup, you got non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and you have been waiting for your day in court, and now it sounds like the highest court in the country just told you it is over.
It is not over. Not even close. And the difference between what the news said and what the ruling actually did is the difference between giving up and fighting on — so let us give you the truth, straight, from the people who do this work.
The Supreme Court threw out one legal theory. It did not throw out your case. The ruling said that one specific claim — failure to warn, the argument that Bayer-Monsanto should have put a cancer warning on the Roundup label — is preempted by federal pesticide law because the EPA decided no warning was required. That is one door closed. But the Supreme Court itself, in a separate precedent from 2005, explicitly held that other claims against pesticide manufacturers — design defect and negligence — are NOT preempted. Those doors are still open. And those are the doors where the deepest evidence lives: the internal corporate research, the formulation decisions, the testing protocols, the marketing strategies, the post-market surveillance Bayer did or did not do, and the 2023 decision to pull glyphosate-based Roundup off the residential market entirely — an act that a jury may read as the company’s own answer to whether the product was safe enough to keep on store shelves.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases, including toxic tort and product liability claims, in Missouri and nationwide. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before crossing over to fight for injured people — he knows how the other side values claims, how they set reserves, and how they engineer delay, because he used to do it. We work on contingency: 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The first call is free, and we answer the phone 24 hours a day.
This page is the full, honest, expert explanation of what the Supreme Court ruling means for your Roundup case — what was struck down, what survives, what Bayer’s $7.25 billion settlement proposal means for you, what your case is worth, what evidence you must preserve right now, and what to do next. Nothing here is legal advice for your specific case — it is legal information from a trial team that knows this fight. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the information below is the floor of what you need to understand before you make a single decision.
What the Supreme Court Actually Ruled — and What It Did Not Do
The Supreme Court overturned a jury verdict won by a Missouri man who blamed Roundup for his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The Court’s reasoning was narrow and specific: under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — the federal pesticide statute known as FIFRA — the EPA registers pesticide products and approves their labels. The EPA examined glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, and concluded it is “unlikely to be a human carcinogen.” Because the EPA determined that no cancer warning was required on the label, the Supreme Court held that state-law failure-to-warn claims — lawsuits arguing that Bayer-Monsanto should have added a cancer warning — are preempted by federal law. The logic is that you cannot have a federal regulator saying “no warning needed” and a state jury saying “you should have warned” at the same time.
That is a significant ruling. It removes one of the legal theories that Roundup plaintiffs have used to hold Bayer accountable. But it is not the end of the litigation, and it is not a finding that Roundup is safe.
Here is what the ruling did NOT do. It did not rule on whether glyphosate causes cancer. It did not rule on whether Roundup is defectively designed. It did not rule on whether Bayer-Monsanto was negligent in how it developed, tested, or marketed the product. It did not dismiss the approximately 65,000 Roundup lawsuits still pending. It did not foreclose future lawsuits. And it did not disturb the Supreme Court’s own 2005 precedent, which explicitly established that non-warning claims against pesticide manufacturers — including design defect and negligence — are not preempted by FIFRA.
The distinction matters because the failure-to-warn theory was always one arrow in the quiver. It was the argument that the label should have carried a cancer warning. But the deeper, more damaging claims — that the product was inherently dangerous by design, that the company was negligent in its testing and development, that it misrepresented glyphosate’s safety to consumers and regulators — those claims survive. And those claims reach into a different evidence room: not the label, but the laboratory, the boardroom, and the research file.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A) in 2015 — creating the scientific conflict between international and federal assessments that underlies plaintiff causation arguments and jury credibility determinations.
That is the fracture line. The EPA says “unlikely to be a human carcinogen.” The world’s leading cancer research authority says “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The Supreme Court’s ruling said the EPA’s determination preempts the warning claim — but a jury hearing a design defect or negligence claim can still be told about both assessments and can still decide which one it believes. The scientific conflict did not disappear. It just moved to a different courtroom.
The Surviving Legal Theories — Design Defect and Negligence
If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, your case does not die with the failure-to-warn ruling. Two primary legal theories remain viable, and both are explicitly preserved by the Supreme Court’s own 2005 precedent.
Design Defect — The Product Itself Is Dangerous
A design defect claim argues that Roundup is inherently dangerous by design — that glyphosate, as formulated and sold, causes cancer, and that the product’s risks outweigh its utility. This theory does not depend on the label. It depends on the product itself. To prove it, a plaintiff must show that the product was unreasonably dangerous in its design and that a safer alternative formulation existed or that the risks of the product outweigh its benefits.
This is where the evidence gets powerful. The internal Monsanto and Bayer corporate documents — safety research, testing protocols, formulation decisions, regulatory strategy memos — become the spine of the case. If those documents show that the company knew or should have known of carcinogenic risk beyond what the EPA evaluated, or if they show that safer formulations were available and not pursued, the design defect claim carries weight that the failure-to-warn claim never did.
And here is a piece of evidence that the failure-to-warn theory could never use but the design defect theory can: in 2023, Bayer removed glyphosate-based Roundup from the United States residential market. The company did not have to do this. The EPA had not required it. The Supreme Court had not ordered it. A jury hearing a design defect claim can be told that the company pulled the product from homeowners’ shelves — and can be asked to decide whether that action speaks louder than any label ever could. That is admission-by-conduct, and it is potentially devastating in front of a jury.
Negligence — The Company’s Conduct Was Unreasonable
A negligence claim argues that Bayer-Monsanto was negligent in developing, testing, and marketing Roundup. This encompasses inadequate safety testing, disregard of scientific evidence of carcinogenicity, failure to conduct post-market surveillance, and failure to respond to emerging evidence that glyphosate may cause cancer. Like design defect, negligence is not preempted by FIFRA — the Supreme Court said so explicitly in 2005.
The negligence theory is where corporate conduct becomes the story. Did the company test glyphosate thoroughly enough? Did it follow up on signals of carcinogenicity? Did it conduct post-market surveillance to track whether cancer rates among users were elevated? Did it accurately represent the science to regulators and the public — or did it manipulate the science, ghostwrite favorable studies, or improperly influence regulatory assessments?
Those questions open the door to punitive damages. And in Missouri, that door is wide open.
Negligent Misrepresentation and Fraud — The Punitive Damages Engine
A third theory — negligent misrepresentation or fraud — claims that the company misrepresented glyphosate’s safety to consumers and regulators. This theory is potentially viable depending on the jurisdiction and on evidence of scientific manipulation, ghostwriting of favorable studies, or improper influence on regulatory assessments. It is the theory that supports punitive damages, because it goes to the company’s conduct, not just the product’s design.
The discovery into corporate document retention and research funding practices is the engine for punitive exposure. If plaintiffs can demonstrate that Monsanto manipulated scientific research, ghostwrote favorable studies, or improperly influenced regulatory assessments, the punitive damages theory comes alive — and Missouri’s lack of a punitive damages cap in product liability cases amplifies that theory’s value enormously.
Bayer and Monsanto — the Corporate Defendant You Are Fighting
Bayer AG is a global pharmaceutical and agricultural conglomerate based in Germany. In 2018, Bayer acquired Monsanto Company, the original manufacturer, designer, and marketer of Roundup, in a deal that made Bayer the inheritor of the world’s most widely-used weedkiller — and of every lawsuit that came with it. That acquisition has cost Bayer more than $10 billion in claim resolutions so far and wiped out more than $60 billion in market value. Bayer’s own CEO acknowledged publicly that “the toll to get here has been massive” and that the litigation has “impacted public trust.” He said the litigation “cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars that could have gone toward new medicines or new seeds.” Those are not a plaintiff’s lawyer’s words — those are the defendant’s own words, spoken by the person running the company.
Monsanto Company, now a Bayer subsidiary, was headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, before the acquisition. That gives Missouri courts an exceptionally strong connection to the underlying litigation. The internal document custodians — the scientists, the regulatory affairs staff, the executives who made formulation and testing decisions — are people whose professional lives were centered in Missouri. When a plaintiff’s lawyer serves discovery on Monsanto, the records that come back often come from Missouri-based custodians, and the corporate knowledge that built Roundup sits in Missouri’s backyard.
That is not a minor procedural point. It is one of the reasons the proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement is pending in St. Louis state court — a venue historically regarded as receptive to corporate-accountability claims against pharmaceutical and chemical defendants. St. Louis juries have been willing to listen to the evidence and return significant verdicts against corporate defendants. The fact that the defendant’s own headquarters sat in the same city where the jury pool lives is a structural advantage that few mass tort venues can claim.
The agricultural Midwest — Missouri and surrounding states — represents one of the highest glyphosate-use regions in the country. The exposure plaintiff pool is geographically concentrated here. Farmers, agricultural workers, landscapers, groundskeepers, and residential users across Missouri have been handling Roundup for decades. If you are one of them, you are not an outlier — you are part of a population that was in the path of this product.
The $7.25 Billion Settlement — Should You Participate or Opt Out?
Bayer’s proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement is pending in St. Louis state court. It is designed to resolve Roundup suits that have already been filed and potential claims that could be filed over a 21-year period. The ruling by the Supreme Court will likely bolster Bayer’s position in pushing this settlement forward, because the elimination of the failure-to-warn theory weakens the leverage that plaintiffs had in individual litigation. A federal judge overseeing all Roundup litigation filed in United States federal courts has criticized the settlement’s opt-out terms, calling them “mind boggling” — and has suggested that former Roundup users may still be able to press their claims in his court since they would not be barred by the state-court settlement’s terms.
This creates one of the most important decisions a Roundup claimant will ever face: participate in the class settlement, or opt out and pursue individual litigation on the surviving theories.
When the Settlement May Make Sense
For claimants with moderate exposure — shorter duration of Roundup use, less frequent application, a non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis that may be harder to tie specifically to glyphosate — the settlement program may offer a faster, more certain resolution. The ruling has created downward pressure on trial outcomes, and the elimination of failure-to-warn removes a tool that juries found persuasive. If your exposure documentation is thin, if you used Roundup only occasionally, or if your medical history includes other potential risk factors for NHL, the settlement program’s guaranteed participation may be more attractive than rolling the dice in front of a jury that has now heard the Supreme Court ruled for Bayer.
When Opting Out and Going to Trial May Make Sense
For claimants with strong exposure documentation — years of regular Roundup use, purchase receipts, spray logs, farm or application records, a clear diagnostic timeline connecting exposure to diagnosis — individual litigation on design defect and negligence theories may preserve significantly more value. The settlement program is designed to cap Bayer’s exposure. Individual litigation, particularly in a favorable venue like St. Louis, with strong exposure evidence, clear NHL damages, and corporate-document discovery that reveals scientific manipulation or suppressed adverse findings, can produce outcomes that far exceed the settlement program’s per-claimant allocation.
And in Missouri, the lack of a punitive damages cap in product liability cases means that a jury finding corporate scientific manipulation can return a punitive award with no statutory ceiling. That tail-risk for the defense is precisely what drives settlement value above the program floor — and it is the reason that strong-exposure claimants should think very carefully before signing away their right to pursue it.
This is not a decision to make alone, and it is not a decision to make after reading a headline. It is a decision that depends on your individual exposure history, your medical records, your pathology, the strength of your specific causation evidence, the venue where your case would be filed, and the strategic posture of the litigation at the moment you are evaluating. If you are facing this decision, you need a lawyer who understands both the settlement program’s structure and the trial-value of an individual case — and who will tell you honestly which path serves your family.
Missouri Law — Your State’s Framework for a Roundup Case
Missouri is where Monsanto built Roundup. It is where the proposed settlement sits. And it is a state whose legal framework gives Roundup plaintiffs tools that many other states do not.
Comparative Fault — Pure Comparative
Missouri applies a pure comparative fault standard. This means you can recover even if you bear substantial responsibility for your own exposure — your damages are simply reduced proportionally. If a jury finds you 40 percent at fault for how you used the product, you still recover 60 percent of your damages. Every percentage point the defense tries to pin on you is money, and that is exactly why the defense works so hard to argue you misused the product, failed to wear protective equipment, or should have known the risks. But in Missouri, those arguments reduce, they do not erase.
Punitive Damages — No Cap in Product Liability
Missouri imposes no statutory cap on punitive damages in product liability cases. This is one of Missouri’s strongest advantages for Roundup plaintiffs. In a state that caps punitive damages, the worst corporate conduct is still financially bounded. In Missouri, a jury that finds Bayer-Monsanto manipulated science, ghostwrote studies, or hid evidence of carcinogenicity can return a punitive award with no statutory ceiling — and that uncapped tail-risk is what keeps the defense at the table in settlement negotiations.
Statute of Limitations — the Clock on Your Case
Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury actions generally runs five years from the date of injury or discovery. In toxic tort exposure cases, the discovery rule may extend the limitations period based on when the plaintiff knew or should have known of the cancer diagnosis and its potential link to Roundup use. This is not a simple calendar calculation — the interplay between exposure date, diagnosis date, and the date you first learned that Roundup may have caused your cancer is a legal question that depends on your specific facts.
If your family member died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma or treatment-related complications, Missouri recognizes both survival actions (damages accruing between injury and death) and wrongful death actions (brought by statutory beneficiaries) as separate claims with distinct damage elements and limitations periods. The applicable deadline and beneficiary hierarchy for wrongful death in Missouri is a question that must be confirmed for your specific situation — but the general principle is that the clock does not start on the date of exposure. It starts when you knew or should have known.
Do not assume it is too late. Do not assume the Supreme Court ruling restarted anything. And do not let anyone tell you that the five-year window has already closed without checking the discovery rule’s application to your specific timeline. The day you call a lawyer is the day that question gets answered for your case, not before.
The Medicine — Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and What It Does to a Family
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphatic system — the body’s network of lymph nodes, spleen, and infection-fighting white blood cells. It is a hematologic malignancy, meaning it begins in the blood-forming tissues. It is not a solid tumor you can cut out and be done with. It is a systemic disease that requires systemic treatment, and the treatment is brutal.
The Treatment — and What It Costs
NHL typically requires aggressive multi-agent chemotherapy regimens — combinations of drugs delivered in cycles over months. Many patients receive immunotherapy, which adds targeted biological agents to the chemotherapy. Some receive radiation. For patients whose disease relapses or progresses to aggressive subtypes, the treatment escalates to stem cell transplantation — a process that essentially destroys the patient’s immune system and rebuilds it, requiring weeks of hospitalization in protective isolation.
Each treatment cycle can produce medical expenses reaching several hundred thousand dollars. A stem cell transplant alone can cost into the high six figures. And the costs do not end when treatment does — NHL survivors require ongoing surveillance, repeated imaging, blood work, and the psychological toll of living with the knowledge that the disease can return at any time.
What the Family Watches
Economic damages include cumulative treatment costs, lost wages during treatment and recovery, and diminished earning capacity — particularly for patients whose disease relapses or who cannot return to the same work. But the non-economic damages are what the family lives with every day: the physical pain of chemotherapy and disease progression, the emotional distress of a cancer diagnosis, the loss of quality of life, and the psychological toll of long-term surveillance and recurrence anxiety.
A parent who went through chemotherapy for NHL will tell you about the nausea that did not respond to medication, the fatigue that made walking to the bathroom an expedition, the mouth sores that made eating impossible, and the fear — the constant, grinding fear — that every follow-up scan will show the disease has come back. That fear does not have a price tag. But the law allows a jury to compensate it, and in Missouri, the law does not cap what a jury can award for it.
Survival and Wrongful Death
For families who have lost a loved one to NHL or to treatment-related complications, Missouri recognizes two separate claims. A survival action covers the damages that accrued between the injury and death — the pain, the medical expenses, the lost wages during the illness. A wrongful death action is brought by statutory beneficiaries — typically the spouse and children, then parents, then more distant heirs — and compensates the family for the loss of financial support, the loss of companionship, and the loss of the life that was taken. These are separate claims with separate damage elements, and both must be evaluated and pleaded distinctly.
If your spouse, parent, or child died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of Roundup use, you need to understand that the law treats the death as two cases — one for what your loved one went through, and one for what the family lost. A defense lawyer is happy to let a grieving family walk through only one door.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
Evidence in a Roundup case lives in five places, and each has its own clock. The Supreme Court ruling changed the legal landscape, but it did not change the evidence — and the evidence is what wins the surviving claims.
Your Exposure History — Purchase Receipts, Product Containers, Application Records
The foundation of any Roundup case is specific causation — proving that YOUR exposure to Roundup caused YOUR non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That proof starts with exposure documentation: when did you buy Roundup, how often did you use it, how long did you use it, and how concentrated was your exposure.
For agricultural workers and farmers, spray logs, farm application records, and purchase records from agricultural supply companies can establish years or decades of regular, concentrated exposure. For residential users, the documentation is harder — purchase receipts fade, empty containers get thrown away, and most homeowners never kept a log of when they sprayed their driveway or garden. But it is not impossible: credit card records, hardware store loyalty-program histories, landscaper invoices, and coworker or family-member testimony can reconstruct exposure patterns years after the fact.
This evidence degrades. Receipts fade. Containers are discarded. Memories drift. The sooner this documentation is assembled — photographed, scanned, sworn to in affidavits — the stronger the specific-causation link becomes.
Your Medical Records — Pathology Reports, Treatment History, Oncologist Prognoses
Complete medical records are the damages spine of the case. NHL pathology reports identify the specific subtype — diffuse large B-cell, follicular, mantle cell, or others — and the subtype matters because some have stronger epidemiological links to glyphosate exposure than others. Treatment history documents the chemotherapy regimens, the hospitalizations, the complications, and the response. Oncologist prognoses establish the future-care needs, the surveillance schedule, and the recurrence risk.
Medical institutions retain these records long-term, but obtaining complete files — every pathology report, every chemotherapy administration record, every imaging study, every oncologist note — requires targeted records requests. Plaintiff counsel should secure the full diagnostic and treatment files immediately, not just the discharge summary.
Internal Monsanto and Bayer Corporate Documents — the Punitive Engine
This is where the design defect and negligence theories live or die. Internal corporate documents on glyphosate safety research, testing protocols, and regulatory strategy support both surviving legal theories and are the primary engine for punitive damages. If discovery reveals evidence of scientific manipulation, ghostwritten favorable studies, suppressed adverse findings, or improper influence on regulatory assessments, the case transforms from a product liability claim into a corporate accountability claim — and the punitive damages theory becomes live.
These documents are subject to corporate retention policies and litigation holds. Historical document destruction has been alleged in this litigation. Custodian turnover since the Bayer acquisition creates spoliation risk — when the scientists and executives who created the documents retire, transfer, or are terminated, the institutional knowledge of what existed and where it was stored can disappear. The preservation letter that freezes these documents has to go out early, naming specific custodians, specific time periods, and specific document categories.
EPA Regulatory Filings and Scientific Assessments
EPA regulatory filings, correspondence, and scientific assessments on glyphosate are public records maintained by federal agencies. They establish the regulatory framework that the Supreme Court relied on for its preemption ruling — but they also reveal the gaps between what the EPA reviewed and what Monsanto’s internal research may have shown. The conflict between the EPA’s “unlikely to be a human carcinogen” finding and the IARC’s “probably carcinogenic to humans” classification is the scientific battleground, and the EPA’s own administrative record — what it considered, what it did not consider, and what Monsanto submitted to it — is part of that fight.
Expert Witness Work Product — General and Specific Causation
Expert analysis must be commissioned well before limitations deadlines and before Daubert challenges — the pretrial motions where the defense tries to exclude plaintiff experts as unreliable. In a post-ruling world, expert selection becomes the make-or-break factor. Plaintiff needs board-certified oncologists who can establish general causation — that glyphosate causes NHL — and toxicologists and epidemiologists who can connect the plaintiff’s specific exposure to their specific diagnosis. These experts must be prepared to handle the EPA-IARC scientific conflict before juries who may have heard that the Supreme Court ruled for Bayer, and they must be ready to explain why the EPA’s finding does not close the scientific question.
The Defense Playbook — What Bayer Will Do Now and How to Counter It
The Supreme Court ruling changes the defense playbook. Bayer’s lawyers have a new weapon, and they will use it at every stage of the litigation. Here are the plays you should expect — and the counter to each.
Play 1: “The Supreme Court Ruled Roundup Is Safe”
This is the defense’s favorite post-ruling move — suggesting in every filing, every motion, and every opening statement that the highest court in the land has spoken and Roundup is safe. It is a deliberate mischaracterization of a narrow preemption ruling into a broad scientific endorsement.
The counter: The Supreme Court ruled on labeling law, not on cancer science. The Court said the EPA’s determination preempts state warning requirements — it did not evaluate whether glyphosate causes cancer, and it explicitly preserved design defect and negligence claims. A jury hearing a design defect or negligence claim can be told the full scientific picture, including the IARC classification, and can decide for itself.
Play 2: “The EPA Said It Is Not a Carcinogen — Case Closed”
The defense will wave the EPA’s “unlikely to be a human carcinogen” finding like a shield, arguing that the federal government has spoken and no jury can second-guess it.
The counter: The EPA is a regulatory agency operating under statutory mandates and political pressures, not a scientific court of final appeal. The IARC — the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm — looked at the same chemical and reached the opposite conclusion. A jury can hear both assessments and decide which it finds more credible. The EPA’s finding does not bind a jury on the question of whether the product was defectively designed or whether the company was negligent.
Play 3: Pressure Toward the Settlement — “Take What Is Offered Before It Gets Worse”
The defense will use the ruling to pressure claimants toward the $7.25 billion settlement, arguing that the elimination of failure-to-warn has weakened every case and that the settlement program represents the best available outcome.
The counter: The settlement program is designed to cap Bayer’s exposure — it is not designed to maximize your recovery. For strong-exposure claimants with clear diagnostic timelines and favorable venue options, individual litigation on surviving theories may preserve substantially more value, particularly in Missouri, where punitive damages are uncapped in product liability cases. The ruling did not eliminate the design defect theory, the negligence theory, or the punitive damages theory. It eliminated one of several arrows.
Play 4: The Causation Attack — “You Cannot Prove Roundup Caused YOUR Cancer”
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma has multiple causes and no single signature that ties it definitively to glyphosate. The defense will argue that the plaintiff’s NHL was idiopathic — arising from unknown causes — or was caused by other risk factors: age, family history, immune conditions, other chemical exposures.
The counter: Specific causation is proven through dose reconstruction — how much glyphosate the plaintiff was exposed to, over how many years, with what frequency and intensity — combined with epidemiological evidence showing that people with similar exposure profiles have elevated NHL risk. Board-certified oncologists and toxicologists can opine that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the plaintiff’s exposure was a substantial contributing cause of the disease. The defense’s “you cannot prove it” argument is not unique to Roundup — it is the standard defense in every toxic tort case, and it is beaten with thorough exposure documentation and strong expert testimony.
Play 5: Voir Dire Contamination — “The Jury Already Knows Bayer Won”
The defense will try to seat jurors who have heard the news that the Supreme Court ruled for Bayer, and will try to frame the case as already decided by the highest court in the country.
The counter: Voir dire must address jury awareness of the ruling directly. Potential jurors must be asked whether they have heard about the Supreme Court decision, what they understand it to mean, and whether they can keep an open mind about the specific claims before them. Defense counsel cannot be allowed to frame the case as already decided — because it is not. The surviving claims are live, the evidence is different, and the questions for the jury are different.
How a Roundup Case Is Actually Built — the Proof Story
Here is how a case like this moves from intake to resolution — the chronological walk of someone who has been through it.
Week one: You call. We listen. We take down your exposure history — when you first used Roundup, how often, for how many years, in what concentrations. We identify the medical records we need — pathology reports, treatment history, oncologist prognoses — and we send records requests to every treating institution. We begin assembling the exposure timeline that will anchor the specific-causation case.
Weeks two through four: The preservation letter goes out — to Bayer, to Monsanto, to any third-party custodian of relevant records — ordering them to freeze every internal document, every research file, every regulatory communication, every email, every memo touching glyphosate safety, testing, formulation, or marketing. This letter is the clock-stopper. It is what converts routine corporate document retention into a legal obligation to preserve. If documents disappear after that letter, the consequences range from adverse-inference instructions (the jury can be told to assume the lost documents were as bad as the plaintiff says) to sanctions.
Months one through three: Medical records arrive. Expert retention begins — a board-certified oncologist for specific causation, a toxicologist for general causation, an industrial hygienist for exposure reconstruction. The experts review the records, the exposure history, and the scientific literature. They begin forming opinions on whether glyphosate caused your NHL and whether your specific exposure profile makes that connection medically sound.
Months three through twelve: Discovery — the formal exchange of information between the parties. Written interrogatories, document demands, and depositions. The Monsanto corporate witnesses — the scientists, the regulatory affairs staff, the executives — sit across the table and answer questions under oath. The internal documents come out. The research files, the testing protocols, the marketing strategies, the regulatory submissions. The depositions are where the company’s choices are pinned to the record — and where the evidence for design defect, negligence, and punitive damages is built.
Months twelve through twenty-four: Expert depositions. The defense’s experts are deposed — the toxicologists who will say glyphosate does not cause NHL, the epidemiologists who will say the studies are inconclusive. Our experts are deposed. The science is tested under cross-examination. The Daubert motions are filed — the defense tries to keep our experts out of the courtroom, and we try to keep theirs out.
Month twenty-four and beyond: Mediation, settlement conferences, or trial. The number at the end is built from all of it — the exposure documentation, the medical records, the corporate documents, the expert testimony, the depositions, the venue, and the specific facts of your case. There is no shortcut to that number, and anyone who gives you one on the first phone call is not telling you the truth.
What Your Case Is Worth — Honest Numbers, Honestly Framed
No one can tell you what your case is worth without reviewing your exposure history, your medical records, your pathology, and the specific evidence in your case. But the framework for valuation is real, and you deserve to understand it.
Settlement Program Participation — the Floor
For moderate-exposure NHL claimants participating in the proposed $7.25 billion class resolution, individual recovery may range from approximately $50,000 to $500,000, varying by exposure duration, age at diagnosis, treatment intensity, and pathology subtype. This is the floor — the guaranteed participation value of the settlement program. It is not a ceiling, and it is not what every case is worth. It is what the program offers to make the case go away efficiently.
Individual Litigation on Surviving Theories — the Ceiling
For strong-exposure claimants pursuing individual litigation on design defect and negligence theories — with documented exposure, clear diagnostic timelines, favorable venue, and punitive evidence of corporate scientific manipulation — trial verdicts may range from $5,000,000 to $25,000,000 or higher. Pre-ruling comparable verdicts reached higher figures — a $2.25 billion verdict was returned against Bayer in January 2024 before being reduced and settled for an undisclosed amount — but the elimination of failure-to-warn and the Supreme Court’s endorsement of EPA’s no-warning finding will moderate trial outcomes and create downward settlement pressure.
The ruling does not cap Bayer’s total exposure. It narrows the legal theories. But it also incentivizes settlement participation, which narrows the population of cases likely to proceed to trial to those with the strongest exposure and causation evidence — and those cases, in Missouri, with uncapped punitive damages, still carry enormous value.
The honest framing is this: the ruling reduced the ceiling and raised the floor. Cases that would have settled for more before the ruling may settle for less now. But cases that go to trial on strong facts, in a favorable venue, with corporate-document evidence of misconduct, can still produce outcomes that dwarf the settlement program. The difference between the floor and the ceiling is your exposure documentation, your medical evidence, your venue, and the quality of the legal team building the case.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do Now
If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma — or if someone you love used Roundup and died from NHL or treatment-related complications — the steps you take in the first days after you begin evaluating your legal options matter more than most people realize.
Step one: Document your exposure. Write down every detail you can remember about your Roundup use — when you started, when you stopped, how often you used it, where you bought it, what size containers you purchased, what surfaces or areas you sprayed, whether you wore protective equipment, and whether anyone else can corroborate your use. Photograph any remaining product containers. Locate any purchase receipts, credit card records, or store loyalty histories. If you used Roundup in an agricultural or occupational setting, locate spray logs, application records, or employment records that document your duties.
Step two: Secure your medical records. Request complete copies of your medical file from every treating institution — not just the discharge summary or the most recent oncology note. You need the pathology report that identified the NHL subtype, every chemotherapy administration record, every imaging study, every blood test, and every oncologist note. These records are the damages spine of the case, and they are easier to obtain while the treating institutions still have them in active systems.
Step three: Do not sign anything. If you receive a communication about the $7.25 billion settlement — a notice, an opt-out form, a participation agreement — do not sign it without speaking to a lawyer first. The opt-out decision is irrevocable in most circumstances, and signing away your right to individual litigation before you understand the value of your specific case is the single most common way Roundup claimants lose money they did not know they had.
Step four: Do not give a recorded statement. If anyone representing Bayer, Monsanto, an insurance company, or a claims administrator contacts you and asks you to describe your Roundup use or your medical history on a recording, decline. Recorded statements are engineered to be quoted against you — to establish a timeline you cannot later correct, to pin you to a detail you misremembered, or to minimize your exposure in a way that reduces your case value before you have had a chance to review the full record.
Step five: Do not post about it. Social media is monitored. A post about your health, your Roundup use, or your legal plans can be taken out of context and used to undermine your credibility or minimize your damages. The rule is simple: nothing about your case goes on the internet.
Step six: Call a lawyer. The preservation letter that freezes the corporate documents, the records requests that secure the medical files, the expert retention that builds the causation case — all of these have clocks, and the clocks start running against you the moment you wait. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And the cost of waiting is measured in evidence that disappears and deadlines that pass.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still sue Bayer after the Supreme Court ruling?
Yes. The Supreme Court ruling preempted failure-to-warn claims — the argument that Bayer should have put a cancer warning on the Roundup label — but it explicitly preserved design defect and negligence claims, which the Court’s own 2005 precedent established are not preempted by federal pesticide law. Your case is not over. It is narrower than it was before the ruling, but the surviving theories — that the product was defectively designed and that the company was negligent in how it tested and marketed it — are the theories where the deepest corporate evidence lives.
Did the Supreme Court say Roundup is safe?
No. The Supreme Court said that the EPA’s determination that no cancer warning was required preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims. That is a ruling about labeling law and federal preemption — not about whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Court did not evaluate the scientific question, and it explicitly preserved other claims that depend on the science. The EPA says glyphosate is “unlikely to be a human carcinogen.” The International Agency for Research on Cancer says it is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” That scientific conflict is still alive and still goes to a jury in a design defect or negligence case.
What legal claims still survive against Bayer?
Design defect — the argument that Roundup is inherently dangerous by design because glyphosate causes cancer and a safer alternative formulation existed. Negligence — the argument that Bayer-Monsanto was negligent in developing, testing, and marketing Roundup, including inadequate safety testing, disregard of scientific evidence of carcinogenicity, and failure to conduct post-market surveillance. Negligent misrepresentation or fraud — the argument that the company misrepresented glyphosate’s safety to consumers and regulators, which supports punitive damages where evidence of scientific manipulation or ghostwriting exists. All three are preserved by the Supreme Court’s 2005 precedent.
Should I join the $7.25 billion settlement or opt out?
That depends on your individual exposure documentation, your medical records, your pathology, and the venue where your case would be filed. For moderate-exposure claimants with thinner documentation, the settlement program may offer a faster, more certain resolution. For strong-exposure claimants with clear diagnostic timelines and favorable venue options — particularly in Missouri, where punitive damages are uncapped in product liability cases — individual litigation may preserve significantly more value. This is not a decision to make from a headline. It is a decision that requires a lawyer to evaluate your specific case and tell you honestly which path serves your family.
How long do I have to file a Roundup lawsuit in Missouri?
Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury actions generally runs five years, but the discovery rule may extend the limitations period in toxic tort cases based on when the plaintiff knew or should have known of the cancer diagnosis and its potential link to Roundup use. If your family member died from NHL, Missouri recognizes both survival actions and wrongful death actions as separate claims with distinct limitations periods. Do not assume the clock has run. Do not assume the Supreme Court ruling changed the deadline. Confirm the applicable deadline for your specific situation with a lawyer who can evaluate the discovery rule’s application to your timeline.
What if my family member died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup?
Missouri law treats a death from NHL as two separate claims. A survival action covers what the decedent went through — the pain, the medical expenses, the lost wages during the illness. A wrongful death action is brought by statutory beneficiaries — typically spouse and children first, then parents — and compensates the family for the loss of financial support, companionship, and the life that was taken. Both claims are separate, with distinct damage elements, and both must be evaluated and pleaded distinctly. If your spouse, parent, or child died from NHL after years of Roundup use, you need a lawyer who understands both tracks — because a defense lawyer is happy to let a grieving family walk through only one door.
How much is my Roundup case worth?
No one can answer that without reviewing your exposure history, your medical records, your pathology reports, and the specific evidence in your case. As a framework: settlement-program participation for moderate-exposure claimants may range from approximately $50,000 to $500,000. Individual litigation on design defect and negligence theories, with strong exposure documentation, clear NHL damages, favorable venue, and punitive evidence, may produce trial verdicts from $5,000,000 to $25,000,000 or higher. The ruling has created downward pressure on trial outcomes, but it has not capped individual case value — particularly in Missouri, where punitive damages are uncapped. The difference between the floor and the ceiling is your evidence, your venue, and the quality of your legal team.
I used Roundup years ago and just got diagnosed with NHL — is it too late?
It may not be. The discovery rule in toxic tort cases often means the clock does not start on the date of exposure — it starts when you knew or should have known that your cancer was connected to Roundup use. If you were diagnosed recently and only recently learned that Roundup may have caused your disease, the statute of limitations may have just begun to run. Do not let the passage of time since your exposure convince you that the door is closed. Confirm the applicable deadline with a lawyer who can evaluate the discovery rule’s application to your specific timeline.
Will the Supreme Court ruling affect my already-filed case?
The ruling makes failure-to-warn claims more difficult to pursue, but it does not automatically dismiss any pending case. Cases filed on multiple theories — including failure-to-warn alongside design defect and negligence — will need to be evaluated to determine whether the failure-to-warn count can survive or must be withdrawn, and whether the remaining counts can carry the case to trial. The ruling also affects settlement leverage — Bayer’s position in negotiations has strengthened, and plaintiffs’ counsel must account for the loss of the failure-to-warn theory in demand calculations. But the ruling is “not dispositive of any pending or future pesticide claims against any manufacturer, including Monsanto,” as legal experts have noted.
What evidence do I need to prove my Roundup case?
Three categories. First, exposure documentation — purchase receipts, product containers, spray logs, farm or application records, credit card histories, and witness testimony establishing when, how often, and how long you used Roundup. Second, complete medical records — NHL pathology reports identifying the subtype, treatment history, chemotherapy administration records, imaging studies, and oncologist prognoses establishing damages and future care needs. Third, corporate documents — internal Monsanto and Bayer records on glyphosate safety research, testing protocols, regulatory strategy, and any evidence of scientific manipulation or suppressed adverse findings, obtained through discovery and essential to the design defect, negligence, and punitive damages theories. The first two categories are yours to assemble now. The third is obtained through formal discovery after a case is filed — but the preservation letter that freezes those documents has to go out early, before the evidence can quietly disappear.
Who We Are — and Why It Matters for This Fight
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He leads the active $10 million-plus hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston — a case that, like the Roundup litigation, is about holding an institution accountable for what it knew and what it did with that knowledge. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He does not lose well, and that is a quality you want in the person standing between you and a company that spent $10 billion trying to make these cases go away.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how claims are valued from the inside. He knows how reserves are set in the first 48 hours after a claim arrives. He knows how IME doctors are selected to produce the reports the defense needs. He knows how surveillance works, how social media is mined, and how the “we need more time” delay is engineered to run out the clock on the statute of limitations. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — and we say that with pride, because the families who need this information are not all English-speaking families.
We are a contingency firm. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent if the case settles before trial, 40 percent if it goes to trial. The first call is free — and it is not a sales call. It is a conversation with a trial lawyer about what happened to you, what your options are, and whether your case is one we can help with. If it is not, we will tell you. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too. What we will not do is tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to know.
We handle cases in Missouri and nationwide. Our primary office is in Houston, Texas, with additional offices in Austin and Beaumont. We take Missouri cases working with local counsel where required — and we have been doing this work for more than 24 years.
Your Next Step
The Supreme Court ruling changed the legal landscape for Roundup cases. It did not end them. What it did was narrow the field — and on a narrowed field, the quality of your legal team matters more, not less, because the surviving claims require deeper evidence, stronger experts, and a more sophisticated trial strategy than the failure-to-warn theory ever demanded.
If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma — or if someone you love did — the evidence clock is running. Your exposure documentation is degrading. Your medical records need to be assembled. The corporate documents that prove what Bayer-Monsanto knew and when they knew it need to be frozen with a preservation letter before they can quietly disappear. And the $7.25 billion settlement decision — the opt-in or opt-out choice that will determine the trajectory of your case — is a decision you should not make without understanding what your individual case is actually worth.
Call us. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service. The consultation is free and confidential. There is no fee unless we win your case.
Hablamos Español.
The headline said Bayer won. The fine print says your case is still alive. Let us show you what the fine print means — and what we can do with it.