Roundup Cancer Lawsuits After the Supreme Court: What Monsanto v. Durnell Means for Your Case
The news hit today and if you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma from Roundup, you may feel like the floor just dropped out. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that people who contract cancer from a pesticide cannot sue the manufacturer for failing to warn them — if the EPA did not require a cancer warning on the approved label. That sounds like the end of your case. It is not.
Failure-to-warn was the strongest and most successful theory in the Roundup litigation. It produced verdicts. It drove the roughly $10 billion Bayer has already paid to settle approximately 100,000 cases. It is now preempted — blocked — by federal law for future failure-to-warn claims. But failure-to-warn was one theory, not the only theory. Design defect, fraudulent concealment, negligent testing, and breach of warranty claims target different duties — duties that do not depend on what the label says — and those claims may still survive. The generalist reads “failure-to-warn is preempted” and tells a client their case is over. The expert reads the same decision, sees four surviving paths, and starts building the case around them.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, and this page is for one person: someone who used Roundup, developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and just learned that the Supreme Court changed the legal landscape. You need to know what the decision actually held, what it did not hold, which claims survive, what your case may still be worth, and what to do in the next 72 hours. That is what we give you here — honest, specific, and built for the moment you are in.
What the Supreme Court Actually Held in Monsanto v. Durnell
The Court’s 7-2 majority sided with Monsanto — now owned by Bayer — in holding that state-law failure-to-warn claims are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, known as FIFRA, when the EPA has approved a pesticide without requiring a cancer warning on its label. In plain English: if the federal environmental agency reviewed the pesticide and decided the label did not need a cancer warning, a person who later gets cancer from that product cannot go into state court and sue the manufacturer for not warning them anyway.
FIFRA contains a preemption provision barring states from imposing labeling requirements that are in addition to or different from those required under federal law.
That preemption provision is the engine of the decision. The majority reasoned that allowing a state-law failure-to-warn claim to proceed would effectively impose a state labeling requirement — a cancer warning — that is “in addition to or different from” what EPA required under FIFRA. And because FIFRA’s preemption language is express and broad on labeling, the Court held that state tort law cannot impose that duty through the back door of a lawsuit.
The two dissenting justices saw it differently. They would have preserved the right of states and their courts to hold pesticide manufacturers accountable under state tort law, treating the EPA’s labeling decision as a regulatory floor, not a ceiling that erases state-law remedies. But they lost. The majority’s reasoning controls.
What the decision does NOT hold matters as much as what it does hold. The Court addressed failure-to-warn claims — the theory that the manufacturer owed a duty to put a cancer warning on the product label and breached that duty. The Court did not address whether a manufacturer can be held liable for designing a product that is unreasonably dangerous independent of any labeling issue. It did not address whether a manufacturer can be held liable for fraudulently concealing evidence that its product causes cancer. It did not address whether a manufacturer can be held liable for breaching the implied warranty that its product is fit for ordinary use. These theories rest on different duties — duties that are not labeling requirements — and the defendants will have to fight to extend preemption to cover them.
That fight is where your case lives now. And the defendant starts it from a weaker position than the headline suggests, because the regulatory foundation the Supreme Court built its preemption analysis on — the EPA’s determination that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer — was already struck down as unlawful by a federal court in 2022.
The EPA’s Flawed Safety Determination — and Why It Matters to Your Case
The Supreme Court’s preemption reasoning leans hard on the EPA’s safety determination for glyphosate. In 2020, the EPA issued a registration review decision concluding that glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” The Court treated that determination as the regulatory predicate for preemption: because the EPA reviewed glyphosate and decided no cancer warning was needed, state law cannot impose one through a tort suit.
Here is the problem with that foundation. In 2022, a federal court struck down that very determination as unlawful.
A federal court in 2022 struck down EPA’s human health assessment, based on its denial of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, as contrary to the agency’s own Cancer Guidelines and scientific standards.
The court found that the EPA’s tacit acknowledgment that glyphosate might cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma was irreconcilable with its overall denial of cancer risk, and that the agency violated its own cancer hazard guidelines in rejecting evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. In other words, the EPA’s determination that the Supreme Court relied on was already judicially invalidated — found to be the product of broken scientific reasoning that ignored the agency’s own standards.
This creates a live and powerful appellate argument: if the regulatory predicate for preemption was itself unlawful — if the EPA’s “no cancer risk” finding was struck down because it was scientifically indefensible — then the preemption analysis may rest on a foundation that no longer exists. The defendants will argue that the EPA’s determination was still in effect at the relevant time and that preemption turns on the agency’s action, not its later judicial review. But the tension between a preemption ruling built on an invalidated safety finding is a crack in the defense that did not exist before the 2022 ruling, and it is a crack we intend to widen.
There is another dimension to the EPA problem that the Supreme Court did not confront. Analysis of EPA’s own records shows that over the last 40 years, the agency has classified 200 pesticide active ingredients as “likely” or “possible” carcinogens — many of them still in use today. Yet labels for these EPA-approved pesticides almost never carry a cancer warning. The EPA routinely approves pesticides it acknowledges pose cancer risks without requiring that users be informed. That is not a system that protects the public. It is a system that protects the manufacturers. And the Supreme Court has now held that this same broken system preempts the right to sue the manufacturer for not warning you.
Meanwhile, the world’s leading authority on cancer-causing agents reached the opposite conclusion from the EPA. The International Agency for Research on Cancer — IARC — classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. That classification was unanimous. It was based on three converging lines of evidence: epidemiology studies showing that glyphosate-using farmers are more likely to contract non-Hodgkin lymphoma, tumors in rodents fed glyphosate in long-term studies, and tests demonstrating changes typical of cancer in cells exposed to glyphosate. The IARC Working Group that made this unanimous determination included an EPA scientist, among other U.S. cancer experts. An EPA scientist agreed that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic — even as the EPA as an institution was moving toward the opposite conclusion.
Which Legal Theories Survive the Preemption Ruling
This is the section that matters most to your case. The Supreme Court eliminated failure-to-warn. It did not eliminate every path to accountability. Here is the honest map of what survives, what the defense will argue against each, and where the fight lives.
Design Defect — The Product Itself Is Unreasonably Dangerous
A design defect claim says the product is dangerous in a way that a safer design could have avoided, and that the danger outweighs the product’s utility. This is not a claim about what the label says. It is a claim about what the product IS. FIFRA’s preemption provision reaches labeling requirements — not requirements that the product be designed safely. The duty to design a reasonably safe product is a state tort duty that exists independent of any federal labeling regime.
To pursue this theory, you would need to prove either that a safer alternative design existed — a formulation of glyphosate that achieved the herbicidal purpose without the cancer risk, or a product that accomplished the same agricultural goal without using a probable human carcinogen — or that the product’s cancer risk outweighs its utility, making it unreasonably dangerous as designed. The defense will argue that a design defect claim that effectively requires a cancer warning is just failure-to-warn in disguise and should be preempted too. The counter is precise: the duty breached is not a duty to warn on a label. It is a duty to design and sell a product that is not unreasonably dangerous. Those are different duties imposed by different legal principles, and only one of them is a labeling requirement under FIFRA.
Fraudulent Concealment and Misrepresentation — They Knew and Hid It
A fraudulent concealment claim says the manufacturer deliberately suppressed or manipulated scientific evidence regarding its product’s cancer-causing potential. This is not about what the label says. It is about what the company did — whether it lied, ghostwrote studies to create the appearance of scientific consensus, buried internal research showing cancer risk, or manipulated the regulatory process to keep warnings off the label.
Prior discovery in the Roundup litigation produced internal Monsanto documents suggesting ghostwriting of ostensibly independent scientific literature and suppression of internal research showing cancer risks. Those documents — if they can be accessed through active discovery or public court records — are the evidence that drives this theory. FIFRA preemption does not reach independent tort claims based on a manufacturer’s fraud. The duty not to deceive is not a labeling requirement. It is a general duty of honest dealing that exists in every state’s tort law.
The defense will argue that a fraud claim that depends on the absence of a cancer warning is preempted because it would effectively require a warning the EPA did not mandate. The counter: the fraud claim does not seek to impose a labeling requirement. It seeks to hold the manufacturer accountable for its own deception — for lying to regulators, for suppressing science, for manipulating the very process that produced the “no cancer warning” label the manufacturer now hides behind.
Negligent Design and Testing — They Failed to Investigate the Danger
A negligent design and testing claim says the manufacturer failed to adequately test glyphosate for carcinogenicity during product development, or ignored internal evidence of cancer risk that its own testing revealed. This targets the company’s conduct — what it did or did not do in the laboratory — not what it wrote on the label. The duty to test a product for foreseeable dangers before selling it is a standard negligence duty. It is not a labeling requirement.
The defense will argue that this claim depends on the premise that the product should have carried a cancer warning — because if there was no duty to warn, there was no duty to test for the thing the warning would have addressed. The counter: the duty to test is a product-development duty, not a labeling duty. A manufacturer can breach the duty to test for cancer risk and concurrently breach no labeling duty at all, because testing and warning are different stages of the product lifecycle governed by different legal duties.
Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability — The Product Was Unfit for Ordinary Use
A breach of warranty claim says the product was unfit for the ordinary purpose for which it was sold — weed control in residential yards, agricultural fields, and commercial landscaping — because it carried a cancer risk that made it unreasonably dangerous for that ordinary use. This theory focuses on product fitness, not warning adequacy. The implied warranty of merchantability is a staple of state commercial law, and it asks whether the product was what a reasonable consumer expected it to be — a weedkiller, not a weedkiller that gives you lymphoma.
FIFRA preemption may not reach this theory because the implied warranty is about the product’s fitness, not its label. The defense will argue that a warranty claim that depends on the absence of a cancer warning is preempted. The counter: the warranty claim does not ask whether the label should have said “causes cancer.” It asks whether a product that causes cancer was fit for the ordinary purpose for which it was sold. Those are different questions governed by different legal standards.
The Common Thread — and the Common Defense
Every surviving theory shares one characteristic: it imposes a duty that is NOT a labeling requirement. That is the line that separates what is preempted from what may survive. The defense will fight to blur that line, arguing that every one of these claims is just failure-to-warn wearing a different hat. Our job is to keep the line clear — to plead, prove, and argue each theory as what it genuinely is: a claim about the product’s design, the company’s honesty, the adequacy of its testing, or its fitness for ordinary use — not a claim about what words should have been printed on the bottle.
The Scale of Glyphosate Exposure in America
The reason this litigation involves tens of thousands of cases — and the reason the Supreme Court’s decision touches millions of lives — is the sheer scale of glyphosate use in the United States. Every year, 280 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on 298 million acres of American farmland — an area the size of nearly three Californias. Over 21 million more pounds are applied by homeowners on their lawns and gardens, on roadways, in forestry operations, and for other non-agricultural uses. Because of this intensive use, glyphosate is found regularly in food, soil, air, water, and human bodies.
This means potential plaintiffs include farmers who sprayed fields season after season, farmworkers who walked through freshly treated crops, landscapers who applied Roundup professionally day after day, groundskeepers who maintained parks and schoolyards, and homeowners who killed weeds in their driveways on weekends. The exposure pathways are as varied as the American landscape itself — and the cancer that follows does not discriminate by how the glyphosate entered the body.
The nationwide use pattern means that potential plaintiffs exist in every state, in every agricultural region, and in every suburban subdivision where a bottle of Roundup sat in the garage. The litigation has spanned multiple federal and state courts, including California, Missouri — Monsanto’s former headquarters — and federal multidistrict litigation proceedings. Where you file, what state’s law applies, and what that state’s tort rules say about design defect, fraud, warranty, comparative fault, and damage caps are questions that must be answered for your specific case — and the answers vary.
If you or a loved one developed cancer after exposure to a toxic substance, our toxic tort claim practice handles cases like these nationwide, working with local counsel where required to ensure the right court, the right law, and the right strategy for each client’s specific situation.
What Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Does to a Body
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma — NHL — is a cancer of the lymphatic system, the body’s network of nodes and vessels that carries immune cells. It begins when white blood cells called lymphocytes develop mutations that make them multiply abnormally and survive past their normal lifespan. The abnormal cells accumulate in lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow, and other lymphatic tissue, forming tumors that disrupt the immune system’s ability to fight infection.
The diagnosis changes everything. Treatment depends on the type and stage of NHL but commonly involves chemotherapy regimens that can last months, radiation therapy targeted at affected lymph node regions, immunotherapy using monoclonal antibodies that train the immune system to attack cancer cells, and in some cases stem cell transplants that rebuild the blood-forming system after high-dose chemotherapy destroys it. Each of these treatments carries its own burden — nausea, fatigue, hair loss, immune suppression, infection risk, organ damage, and the psychological weight of confronting your own mortality while the poison that may have caused it is still being sprayed on farms across the country.
For some patients, NHL is treatable and survivable. For others, it is terminal. The five-year survival rate varies dramatically by subtype — from over 70 percent for some indolent forms to under 60 percent for aggressive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and far worse for relapsed or refractory disease. Even survivors carry the cancer for life: NHL has a high recurrence rate, and the treatments themselves can cause secondary cancers, heart damage, and lifelong immune dysfunction.
The damages in a Roundup NHL case reflect this reality. Economic damages include past and future medical expenses — chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, stem cell transplant costs, ongoing surveillance and follow-up care, and the life-care planning costs that a certified planner projects across a lifetime. Lost wages and diminished earning capacity account for the time the cancer stole from a working life. Non-economic damages — the human losses no receipt can measure — include physical pain, the emotional devastation of a cancer diagnosis, the terror of treatment, the loss of quality of life, and the strain on relationships and family.
In cases where the plaintiff has died from NHL or its complications, survival and wrongful death claims may apply. The estate can pursue the decedent’s own claim for the pain and suffering experienced between injury and death, and the family can pursue their own losses — the financial support the decedent would have provided, the services they would have performed, and the companionship and guidance that were taken. Our wrongful death claim practice handles these cases with the same attention to the science and the same ferocity toward the defendant.
Punitive damages — damages meant to punish the manufacturer rather than compensate the victim — were awarded in multiple Roundup bellwether cases before the Supreme Court’s decision, based on evidence that Monsanto suppressed and manipulated scientific evidence regarding glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. The preemption ruling’s impact on punitive damages tied to failure-to-warn theories requires careful post-decision analysis. But punitive damages tied to fraudulent concealment — to the company’s deliberate suppression of cancer evidence — may survive because they rest on the fraud theory, not the warning theory.
How Monsanto’s Corporate Structure Affects Your Case
Monsanto Company manufactured Roundup for decades. In 2018, Bayer AG — the German pharmaceutical and life sciences conglomerate — acquired Monsanto and assumed its litigation exposure as part of the acquisition. That decision has cost Bayer approximately $10 billion in settlement payouts so far, with approximately 61,000 cases still pending at the time of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Bayer is the deep pocket behind Monsanto’s liability. As the successor-in-interest, Bayer is responsible for the approximately $10 billion already paid and faces the approximately 61,000 pending cases. Earlier this year, Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion settlement in an attempt to resolve pending lawsuits through a class action settlement rather than resolving claims individually. A federal judge recently sent the settlement case back to state court, overruling plaintiff objections and strengthening Bayer’s efforts to win approval for the settlement.
What does this mean for your individual case? The class settlement — if approved — would resolve claims through a collective process rather than individual litigation. But individual cases with strong fact patterns — heavy occupational exposure, clear NHL diagnosis, compelling evidence of Monsanto’s knowledge suppression — may be better served by pursuing individual claims under the surviving legal theories rather than joining a class settlement that averages recovery across all participants. The decision to join a class or pursue an individual claim depends on the specific facts of your exposure, your diagnosis, and your jurisdiction’s law.
Monsanto historically maintained aggressive litigation defenses, contesting causation between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma despite IARC’s 2015 classification of glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. The company has faced allegations of ghostwriting scientific literature — creating the appearance of independent research that was actually authored or directed by Monsanto — and suppressing internal research showing cancer risks. The internal documents that surfaced in prior bellwether discovery are the evidence that supports surviving fraud and punitive damages theories independent of labeling.
Evidence You Must Preserve — and How Fast It Can Disappear
The proof in a Roundup cancer case is built from records, and those records are perishable. Every day you wait, evidence that would have proven your case is being archived, destroyed, or simply lost to time. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Medical Records — Your NHL Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prognosis
Your oncology records are the foundation of the injury side of the case. Pathology reports that confirm the NHL diagnosis and subtype, treatment records documenting chemotherapy regimens and their dates, imaging studies showing disease progression or response, and your treating physician’s prognosis — these establish specific causation (your injury), injury severity, and the damages baseline.
Who holds it: Your treating oncologist, the hospital or cancer center where you received treatment, and any imaging facilities.
How fast it dies: Medical records retention varies by state and provider, but adult records are commonly retained for five to ten years — and some providers purge sooner. Oncology treatment records should be compiled immediately, before records are archived to cold storage where retrieval becomes slower, more expensive, and sometimes impossible.
Purchase and Usage Records — Your Roundup Exposure History
Documentation of when, where, and how much Roundup you purchased and used is the foundation of the exposure side of the case. Retail receipts, farm supply invoices, agricultural spray logs, and employment records showing your duties involving pesticide application — these establish the dose-response relationship critical for specific causation.
Who holds it: You (personal records), the retailers or suppliers where you purchased Roundup, your employer (if exposure was occupational), and any agricultural cooperatives or spraying services you used.
How fast it dies: Retail receipts and personal business records degrade quickly — paper fades, digital records get overwritten, and few people keep weedkiller receipts for a decade. Agricultural spray logs may be destroyed per employer retention policies, which can be as short as three to seven years. Employment records, time sheets, and work assignments that document your duties involving pesticide application can be purged by employers within standard retention cycles. Secure these records now.
Employment and Occupational Exposure Records
For farmworkers, agricultural applicators, landscapers, and groundskeepers, employment records are the proof of chronic occupational exposure. Personnel records showing your job duties, time sheets showing how many hours you spent in treated areas, work assignments showing which fields or properties you serviced, and any employer-maintained pesticide application logs — these document the exposure pattern that supports specific causation.
Who holds it: Your current and former employers, agricultural contractors, landscaping companies, and any unions or professional associations that maintained records of your work.
How fast it dies: Personnel records, time sheets, and work assignments can be purged by employers within standard retention cycles — commonly three to seven years after separation. If you have changed jobs or retired, the clock may already be close to running out on these records.
Monsanto and Bayer Internal Documents
The internal scientific studies, corporate communications, and ghostwriting evidence from prior bellwether discovery are the fuel for surviving fraud, design defect, and punitive damages theories. Documents from prior cases showing Monsanto’s knowledge of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, suppression of scientific evidence, ghostwriting of ostensibly independent research, and manipulation of regulatory processes — these are the evidence that drives claims independent of labeling.
Who holds it: Monsanto and Bayer, subject to protective orders and discovery in active cases.
How fast it dies: Documents from prior cases may be sealed, returned to defendants, or subject to protective orders that limit access. They must be accessed through active discovery or public court records promptly. Some documents entered the public record through prior bellwether trials; others remain under seal. A preservation letter and active discovery are the tools to force their production.
EPA Regulatory Records and the IARC Monograph
EPA registration filings, the 2022 federal court ruling striking down the glyphosate safety determination, and IARC monograph materials establishing glyphosate’s probable carcinogenicity — these establish the regulatory and scientific backdrop and support the challenge to the preemption predicate’s validity.
Who holds it: EPA (public regulatory documents), the federal court that issued the 2022 ruling (public court records), and IARC (published monograph).
How fast it dies: These are public records that do not “die” in the same way as personal records, but expert synthesis of the evolving scientific and regulatory record must be prepared promptly to support the surviving theories and the challenge to the EPA’s invalidated safety determination.
What Your Case May Be Worth After the Decision
Honesty about case value is not a courtesy — it is a legal obligation and a practical necessity. Overstating what a case is worth destroys trust when the reality arrives. Understating it lets the defense win without a fight. Here is the honest framework.
Before the Supreme Court’s decision, individual Roundup NHL cases produced verdicts ranging from approximately $80 million to over $2 billion — but those headline numbers were routinely reduced on appeal to the $25 to $80 million range. Mass settlement averages ran around $80,000 to $100,000 per case, reflecting the reality that most cases settled for fractions of the headline verdict numbers.
After the decision, case values decrease significantly because the primary and most successful theory — failure-to-warn — is now preempted. This narrows viable claims to design defect, fraud, and warranty theories that are more difficult to prove and less jury-friendly than a straightforward failure-to-warn case. The defense will push hard to extend preemption to these theories, and even if they survive, the proof requirements are steeper.
However, pending cases with strong fact patterns — heavy occupational exposure, clear NHL diagnosis, and compelling evidence of Monsanto’s knowledge suppression — may retain substantial value in the hundreds of thousands to low millions. The approximately 61,000 pending cases and Bayer’s proposed $7.25 billion class settlement indicate significant aggregate remaining exposure, but per-case value for new filings is dramatically reduced compared to the pre-decision landscape.
The key variables that drive value in a post-Durnell case:
Exposure strength. A farmworker who sprayed Roundup five days a week for twenty years has a far stronger exposure profile than a homeowner who used it twice a year on driveway weeds. The dose-response relationship — how much glyphosate you absorbed over how long — is central to specific causation, and it drives case value.
Diagnosis clarity. A pathology-confirmed NHL diagnosis with a clear subtype and treatment history is objective, documentable proof. Ambiguous diagnoses or cancers with multiple potential causes are harder to tie to glyphosate specifically.
Evidence of Monsanto’s knowledge suppression. If the evidence in your case can show that Monsanto knew glyphosate was probably carcinogenic and concealed that knowledge — through ghostwriting, suppressing internal studies, or manipulating the regulatory process — the fraud theory and the punitive damages it can carry dramatically increase case value.
Jurisdiction. The state where you file, its design defect standard (risk-utility vs. consumer expectations), its fraud requirements, its warranty law, its comparative fault rule, its damage caps, and its statute of limitations all affect what your case is worth. Some states are more plaintiff-friendly than others, and the choice of forum — where it is legally available — can materially change the outcome.
These figures are context for what these cases are worth in the aggregate, not a prediction of what your specific case will produce. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The honest answer to “what is my case worth” requires evaluating your specific exposure history, your medical records, the applicable state’s law, and the evidence available — and that evaluation is what a free consultation provides.
The Defense Playbook — and How We Counter Each Move
Bayer and Monsanto’s legal teams are sophisticated, well-resourced, and now emboldened by the Supreme Court’s ruling. Here are the plays they will run — and the counter to each.
Play 1: “All Claims Are Now Preempted”
The defense will argue that the Supreme Court’s preemption reasoning extends beyond failure-to-warn to cover design defect, warranty, and even fraud claims — because all of them, they will say, ultimately depend on the premise that Roundup should have carried a cancer warning.
Our counter: The duty to design a safe product is not a labeling duty. The duty not to commit fraud is not a labeling duty. The implied warranty of merchantability is about product fitness, not label content. FIFRA’s preemption provision reaches labeling requirements — “requirements for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from” federal requirements. It does not reach duties of safe design, honest dealing, or product fitness. We plead and prove each surviving theory as what it genuinely is, keeping the line between labeling and everything else bright and clear.
Play 2: “The EPA Determined Glyphosate Is Safe”
The defense will lean on the EPA’s 2020 determination that glyphosate is “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans” as proof that the product is safe and that any claim of cancer causation is scientifically unfounded.
Our counter: A federal court already struck down that determination as unlawful in 2022 — finding it contrary to the agency’s own Cancer Guidelines and scientific standards. The EPA’s tacit acknowledgment that glyphosate might cause NHL was irreconcilable with its overall denial of cancer risk. Meanwhile, IARC — the world authority on carcinogenic agents — unanimously classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans, with an EPA scientist on the working group. The regulatory foundation the defense stands on was already demolished by a federal court. We put that court ruling and the IARC classification in front of the jury.
Play 3: “Your Cancer Came From Something Else”
The defense will argue that non-Hodgkin lymphoma has many causes — genetic factors, other chemical exposures, viral infections, immune conditions — and that you cannot prove YOUR NHL came from Roundup rather than something else.
Our counter: Specific causation is proven through exposure history and dose reconstruction. A farmer who sprayed Roundup for twenty years and has no other significant risk factors presents a strong specific causation case. We use toxicology and epidemiology experts to tie the documented exposure to the specific cancer, supported by the IARC classification and the epidemiology studies showing glyphosate-using farmers are more likely to contract NHL.
Play 4: “Join the Class Settlement”
The defense will push the $7.25 billion class settlement as the practical resolution — arguing that individual litigation is now too difficult and uncertain after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Our counter: The class settlement averages recovery across all participants. Individual cases with strong fact patterns — heavy exposure, clear diagnosis, compelling fraud evidence — may be worth far more individually than the class average. The decision to join a class or pursue an individual claim depends on the specific facts of your case, not on the defendant’s preference for the cheapest aggregate resolution. We evaluate your case individually and advise honestly.
Play 5: Delay Until the Statute of limitations Runs
The defense knows that time is on their side. Statutes of limitations continue running regardless of the Supreme Court decision. Every month that passes without a filed claim is a month closer to losing the right to sue entirely.
Our counter: The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The records demands go out immediately. The case is filed before the clock runs. We do not give the defense the one thing they want most — time.
How a Roundup Case Is Built After Durnell
Here is the chronological walk of how a post-decision Roundup cancer case is actually built, from the first phone call through resolution. This is not a summary — it is the process, step by step.
Week one: The intake and the preservation letter. The first call is free. We learn your exposure history — when, where, how long, and how much Roundup you used. We learn your medical history — when the NHL was diagnosed, what pathology confirmed it, what treatment you have received. We learn your work history — whether exposure was occupational or residential, what records exist, what employers are involved. The same day, the preservation letter goes out: to Monsanto and Bayer, ordering them to preserve all internal documents relating to glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, all ghostwriting evidence, all regulatory communications, and all internal scientific studies. To your employers, ordering them to preserve personnel records, time sheets, work assignments, and any pesticide application logs. To your medical providers, ordering them to preserve all oncology records, pathology reports, treatment histories, and imaging studies.
Weeks two through four: Records collection and expert review. Medical records are compiled — the complete oncology file, from pathology through current treatment. Exposure records are assembled — purchase receipts, agricultural spray logs, employment records, and any available documentation of the amount and duration of Roundup use. The 2022 federal court ruling striking down EPA’s glyphosate safety determination is obtained and analyzed. IARC monograph materials establishing glyphosate’s probable carcinogenicity are compiled. Expert witnesses in toxicology, epidemiology, occupational medicine, and oncology are identified and preliminarily engaged — re-credentialed to address general and specific causation independent of labeling issues.
Months one through three: Theory development and pleading. The surviving legal theories — design defect, fraudulent concealment, negligent testing, breach of warranty — are developed into a complaint that pleads each theory as what it genuinely is, keeping the line between labeling and everything else bright and clear. The jurisdiction is selected based on where you were exposed, where you were diagnosed, where the defendant does business, and which state’s law provides the strongest framework for the surviving theories. The case is filed before the statute of limitations runs.
Months three through twelve: Discovery and depositions. Discovery targets Monsanto and Bayer internal documents showing knowledge of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, suppression of scientific evidence, ghostwriting of ostensibly independent research, and manipulation of regulatory processes — the evidence that drives fraud and punitive damages theories independent of labeling. The defense produces documents under protective order; we review them with experts. Deppositions of corporate witnesses — safety directors, scientific officers, regulatory affairs personnel — follow, where the company’s choices are examined under oath. The defense’s causation experts are deposed on their opinions about glyphosate and NHL.
Year one and beyond: Expert reports, Daubert motions, and trial preparation. Expert reports are prepared addressing general causation (does glyphosate cause NHL?) and specific causation (did YOUR NHL come from YOUR Roundup exposure?). The defense will file Daubert motions to exclude plaintiffs’ scientific evidence — particularly in jurisdictions applying strict admissibility standards for scientific testimony. We defend the experts’ qualifications and methodology. The life-care planner builds the cost of ongoing cancer treatment and surveillance. The forensic economist projects lost earning capacity and reduces future costs to present value. The case moves toward trial or settlement — and the strength of the surviving theories, combined with the quality of the preserved evidence, drives the outcome.
What to Do Right Now — Your First 72 Hours
The Supreme Court decision is frightening, but it does not change the most important thing: evidence is still dying on a clock, and the statute of limitations is still running. Here is what to do right now.
Do not assume your case is over. The decision eliminated one legal theory. It did not eliminate every theory. Design defect, fraud, and warranty claims may survive. Each case must be individually assessed against the surviving legal theories, your specific exposure history, and your jurisdiction’s applicable law. A free consultation with a qualified attorney is the only way to know whether your specific facts support a viable claim.
Gather your medical records immediately. Contact your oncologist’s office and request your complete medical file — pathology reports, treatment records, imaging studies, and your physician’s notes. These records establish the injury side of your case, and they should be compiled before they are archived to cold storage.
Document your Roundup use in writing. Write down everything you can remember: what products you used (Roundup brand, generic glyphosate, concentrate or ready-to-use), when you started and stopped using them, how often you applied them, how much you used each time, what equipment you used (handheld sprayer, backpack sprayer, tractor-mounted rig), and where you used them (your yard, your farm, your employer’s properties). Include the names of stores where you purchased Roundup and approximate dates of purchase. This written record becomes the foundation of your exposure history.
Collect employment records if exposure was occupational. If you were exposed to Roundup through your work — as a farmer, farmworker, landscaper, groundskeeper, agricultural applicator, or any other occupation involving pesticide use — request your personnel file from current and former employers. This file should include your job descriptions, time sheets, and any records of your duties involving pesticide application. Employment records can be purged within standard retention cycles, so request them now.
Do not sign anything from Bayer, Monsanto, or any settlement administrator. If you receive a notice about the proposed class settlement, a release form, or any document asking you to waive your right to sue individually, do not sign it without consulting an attorney. These documents are designed to resolve your claim cheaply — often for far less than your case may be worth under the surviving legal theories.
Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance representative. If an adjuster or representative of Bayer, Monsanto, or their insurance carriers contacts you and asks you to provide a recorded statement about your Roundup use and your cancer diagnosis, politely decline and direct them to your attorney. Recorded statements are engineered to be quoted against you — to minimize your exposure, to create gaps in your timeline, and to build the defense’s case at your expense.
Do not post about your case on social media. The defense monitors social media. Posts about your health, your activities, your Roundup use, or your intentions regarding a lawsuit can be taken out of context and used to undermine your claim. Set your accounts to private and refrain from posting anything related to your health or your legal situation.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We will evaluate your specific facts against the surviving legal theories and tell you honestly whether your case has a path forward. If it does, we get to work immediately. If it does not, we tell you that too — because honesty is the only foundation a real case can be built on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my Roundup cancer lawsuit over because of the Supreme Court decision?
No — not necessarily. The decision eliminated the failure-to-warn theory, which was the primary theory used in prior Roundup verdicts. But other legal theories — design defect, fraudulent concealment, negligent testing, and breach of warranty — target different duties that are not labeling requirements under FIFRA and may survive the preemption ruling. Whether your specific case has a viable path depends on your exposure history, your medical diagnosis, the evidence available, and the law of your jurisdiction. Each case must be individually evaluated.
What is FIFRA preemption and why does it matter?
FIFRA — the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — is the federal law that governs pesticide registration, labeling, and sale in the United States. It contains a preemption provision that bars states from imposing labeling requirements that are “in addition to or different from” those required under federal law. The Supreme Court held that state-law failure-to-warn claims — which would effectively require a cancer warning on the label — are preempted because the EPA approved Roundup’s label without requiring such a warning. The key limitation: FIFRA’s preemption reaches labeling requirements, not all state tort duties. Claims based on duties that are not labeling requirements — like the duty to design a safe product or the duty not to commit fraud — are not directly preempted.
Can I still sue if I used Roundup and got non-Hodgkin lymphoma?
Potentially, yes — but the path is different and more difficult than before the Supreme Court’s decision. You would need to pursue a surviving theory — primarily design defect, fraudulent concealment, or breach of warranty — rather than failure-to-warn. These theories require different proof and face different defense challenges. You also need to be within your state’s statute of limitations, which continues running regardless of the Supreme Court decision. A free consultation with a qualified attorney is the only way to know whether your specific facts support a viable claim under a surviving theory.
How long do I have to file a Roundup cancer lawsuit?
The statute of limitations varies by state — typically between two and six years for personal injury claims. For toxic exposure cases involving latent diseases like cancer, many states apply a discovery rule: the clock starts when you discovered, or by reasonable diligence should have discovered, both your injury (the cancer diagnosis) and its cause (the connection to Roundup use). Some states also have statutes of repose that impose an outer deadline regardless of when you discovered the connection. The Supreme Court decision does not stop or extend the statute of limitations clock. You must confirm the specific deadline in your state with an attorney, and you must do it promptly — because every day that passes is a day closer to losing the right to sue entirely.
What if my loved one died from non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup?
If a family member died from NHL or its complications after significant Roundup exposure, survival and wrongful death claims may apply. The estate can pursue the decedent’s own claim for the pain and suffering experienced between injury and death, and the family can pursue their own losses — financial support, services, and companionship. The surviving legal theories — design defect, fraud, warranty — apply to wrongful death and survival claims as they do to personal injury claims. The statute of limitations for wrongful death is typically shorter than for personal injury and varies by state, so time is even more critical in these cases.
How much is my Roundup cancer case worth after the Supreme Court decision?
Case values have decreased significantly because the primary theory — failure-to-warn — is now preempted. Pre-decision verdicts ranged from approximately $80 million to over $2 billion before appellate reductions to the $25 to $80 million range, with mass settlement averages around $80,000 to $100,000 per case. Post-decision, new filings face dramatically reduced per-case value. However, cases with strong fact patterns — heavy occupational exposure, clear NHL diagnosis, compelling evidence of Monsanto’s knowledge suppression — may retain substantial value in the hundreds of thousands to low millions under the surviving legal theories. The exact value depends on your specific exposure, your diagnosis, your jurisdiction’s law, and the evidence available. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Should I join the Bayer class settlement or pursue an individual claim?
That depends on the strength of your individual case. The proposed $7.25 billion class settlement would resolve claims through a collective process that averages recovery across all participants. Individual cases with strong fact patterns — heavy exposure, clear diagnosis, compelling fraud evidence — may be worth far more individually than the class average. The decision to join a class or pursue an individual claim should be made with an attorney who has evaluated your specific facts, not based on the defendant’s preference for the cheapest aggregate resolution. Do not sign any settlement document without consulting an attorney first.
Was the EPA’s determination that glyphosate is safe actually valid?
No — at least not according to a federal court. In 2022, a federal court struck down the EPA’s human health assessment for glyphosate — the same determination the Supreme Court relied on in its preemption analysis — as contrary to the agency’s own Cancer Guidelines and scientific standards. The court found that the EPA’s tacit acknowledgment that glyphosate might cause NHL was irreconcilable with its overall denial of cancer risk, and that the agency violated its own cancer hazard guidelines in rejecting evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity. This creates a potential appellate argument that the preemption predicate itself was invalid. Meanwhile, IARC — the world’s leading authority on cancer-causing agents — unanimously classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans in 2015, with an EPA scientist on the working group that made the determination.
What evidence do I need for a Roundup cancer case?
The evidence falls into three categories. First, medical evidence: pathology reports confirming your NHL diagnosis and subtype, treatment records, imaging studies, and your physician’s prognosis. Second, exposure evidence: receipts or invoices for Roundup purchases, agricultural spray logs, employment records showing duties involving pesticide application, and a written account of your Roundup use history (products, dates, frequency, amounts, equipment, locations). Third, corporate evidence: Monsanto and Bayer internal documents showing knowledge of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, suppression of scientific evidence, and manipulation of regulatory processes — obtained through discovery in an active case. The first two categories are within your control and should be gathered immediately. The third is obtained through litigation.
Do I need a lawyer, or can I handle this myself?
You need a lawyer. The post-decision landscape is more complex, not less. The surviving legal theories — design defect, fraudulent concealment, breach of warranty — require sophisticated pleading to survive preemption challenges, expert testimony on general and specific causation, access to internal corporate documents through discovery, and the ability to counter a well-resourced defense team that just won at the Supreme Court. This is not a case that can be filed pro se. The consultation is free, and we work on contingency — there is no fee unless we win your case.
Why Attorney911
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are Legal Emergency Lawyers, and we have been taking cases that other firms said were too hard since July 18, 2001 — more than 24 years. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, and a journalist before he was a lawyer — which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells, and how to tell it to a jury. He leads the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston — a case that shows exactly what it looks like when this firm decides a corporation needs to answer for what it did to someone’s child.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney, admitted in 2012, and he brings something most plaintiff’s lawyers do not have: years inside a national insurance-defense firm, where he sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how claims are priced from the inside — how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, how surveillance is deployed, and how the delay tactics work. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. And he conducts full client consultations in Spanish — without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. That means the consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not send you a bill. We take the risk alongside you, and we carry it until the case is resolved.
We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. When you call at 2 a.m. because you just read about the Supreme Court decision and you are scared, a real person answers. We have same-day spoliation letters and a 48-hour evidence-preservation protocol — because we know that the proof in a toxic tort case is dying on a clock, and the first letter we send is the one that freezes it.
Hablamos Español. Lupe is fluent, and our staff is bilingual. If your family speaks Spanish at the kitchen table, we speak Spanish at the conference table — with the same depth, the same specificity, and the same ferocity.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We do not promise you a result. We promise you the truth about what your case is, what it is worth, and what we can do about it — and then we do it.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Contact us today — because the evidence is dying, the clock is running, and the fight is far from over.