Missouri Roundup Lawsuits After the Supreme Court’s FIFRA Preemption Ruling — What Survives, What Doesn’t, and What to Do Now
You just heard the news and your stomach dropped. The Supreme Court sided with Bayer. The headlines say thousands of Roundup lawsuits are doomed. You have non-Hodgkin lymphoma. You used Roundup for years — on your garden, your property, the lots you maintained, the fields you worked. And now you are wondering whether your case, the one you were counting on to pay for chemotherapy, to make up for the months of work you could not do, to hold a company accountable for what it put in your hands and told you was safe — whether that case just evaporated on a 7-to-2 vote.
It did not. Not all of it. And not the parts that matter most.
Here is the first thing to understand, plainly: the Supreme Court did not say Roundup is safe. It did not say glyphosate does not cause cancer. It did not say Monsanto is blameless. It said one specific kind of claim — the claim that Monsanto failed to warn you on the label — is blocked by a federal pesticide law that says states cannot impose labeling requirements different from what the EPA approved. That is a significant ruling. It is not the end of your case.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, and we handle toxic-tort and catastrophic-injury cases in Missouri and nationwide. This page is for you — the person in Missouri who used Roundup, got sick, and needs to know what the Supreme Court just did to your rights and what rights you still have. Everything here is legal information, not legal advice. But everything here is also the truth about where this litigation stands today, written by trial lawyers who know how these cases are built and how the defense machine responds when the legal ground shifts.
What the Supreme Court Actually Ruled in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell
The case before the Court came from Missouri. A gardener who used Roundup for years developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A jury awarded him $1.25 million. The Supreme Court took the case to answer one question: does the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — FIFRA, the federal law that governs pesticide labels — block state-law claims that say Monsanto should have warned consumers about cancer risks on the Roundup label?
In a 7-2 decision, the Court said yes. The majority reasoned that FIFRA’s express preemption provision bars states from imposing labeling requirements “in addition to or different from” the label the EPA approved, and that a state tort lawsuit demanding a different warning is itself a state-imposed labeling requirement:
“Because Durnell’s state tort claim would impose a pesticide labeling requirement ‘in addition to or different from’ the label required by EPA, FIFRA expressly preempts Durnell’s claim.”
That is the holding. It is narrow in one critical way and broad in another. It is narrow because it targets only failure-to-warn claims — the theory that Monsanto’s duty was to put a cancer warning on the bottle and it failed to do so. It is broad because failure-to-warn was the most accessible, most widely used, and most commonly successful theory in the Roundup litigation. Thousands of cases relied on it. Legal observers estimate that as many as 30,000 complaints may face dismissal because they were built primarily on that theory.
The dissent, written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued the ruling “ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered.” That dissent matters — not because it changes the law, but because it names what the majority did not address: the harm is real, the cancer is real, and the question of whether a person injured by a product can hold the manufacturer accountable did not disappear just because one road to accountability was closed.
Bayer’s stock rose 17 percent the day the ruling came down. That tells you what the market believes the ruling means for the company’s bottom line. What it means for your individual case is a different question, and the answer depends on which claims your case can still carry.
Is My Roundup Case Over?
For most people, no. But the case you have today is not the same case you had before the ruling.
If your lawsuit was built entirely on the theory that Monsanto failed to warn you about cancer on the Roundup label, that specific claim is now preempted. The defense will move to dismiss it, and in most courts, that motion will succeed. That is the hard truth, and we will not pretend otherwise.
But if your case includes — or can be amended to include — claims for design defect, general negligence, or consumer protection, those claims survived the ruling. The Supreme Court addressed only failure-to-warn. It did not hold that FIFRA preempts every state-law claim against Monsanto. It did not say Roundup is safe. It did not say Monsanto cannot be sued. It said the label-based warning claim is blocked.
Here is what that means in practice. Your case needs to be re-pleaded or re-strategized. The lead theory has to shift from “they should have warned you” to “they designed and marketed a product that was unreasonably dangerous, and they knew it.” That is a harder case to build. It requires more expert testimony, more internal corporate documents, and a stronger scientific foundation. But it is a real case, and it is being pursued by plaintiff counsel across the country right now.
If you have not yet filed, your path is actually clearer than someone whose existing case was built solely on failure-to-warn. You can build your case from the start around the surviving theories, with the evidence the new landscape demands. If you already have a lawyer and they have not talked to you about shifting to design defect and negligence, you need to ask why — and you need to understand whether your case is being handled by someone who reads Supreme Court rulings and adapts, or someone who files the same complaint and hopes.
The Claims That Survived: Design Defect, Negligence, and Consumer Protection
Three primary theories remain available after the ruling. Each requires different proof, carries different risks, and opens a different path to recovery. Understanding the difference between them is the first step in understanding what your case is worth now.
Design Defect — The New Primary Theory
A design defect claim says the product itself was unreasonably dangerous — not because the label was inadequate, but because the formulation of glyphosate and the other ingredients in Roundup was inherently hazardous in a way that a reasonable manufacturer would not have put on the market. This is independent of labeling. The question is not “should they have warned you?” The question is “should they have sold you this formulation at all?”
Most states, including Missouri, apply some version of a risk-utility test for design defect: was the risk of the design outweighed by its utility, and was there a feasible, safer alternative design that the manufacturer could have adopted? To prove this, you need experts who can testify that the glyphosate formulation was unreasonably dangerous, that safer alternatives existed (different surfactants, different concentrations, different active ingredients for the same weed-control purpose), and that Monsanto knew or should have known about the danger.
Here is the catch, and it is the one legal observers have flagged most clearly: many design defect claims in the Roundup litigation previously relied heavily on failure-to-warn evidence. The internal Monsanto documents showing the company knew about cancer risks were used to support both failure-to-warn and design defect theories. Now that failure-to-warn is preempted, the defense will argue that any design defect claim that leans on “they knew about the danger and didn’t warn” is just failure-to-warn in disguise. The plaintiff’s counter is that knowledge of danger is relevant to design defect too — not because the company should have warned, but because a company that knows its product is dangerous and sells it anyway has made a design choice, not just a labeling choice. That fight is already playing out in courts across the country, and how it resolves in your jurisdiction will shape your case.
General Negligence — What Monsanto Knew and Did
A negligence claim says Monsanto breached a duty of reasonable care in how it developed, tested, and marketed glyphosate. This survives preemption because it does not depend on the label. It depends on the company’s conduct — the decisions it made, the studies it ran or did not run, the science it influenced or suppressed, and the way it represented its product to regulators and the public.
Negligence can encompass a range of conduct that internal corporate documents have already begun to surface in prior bellwether trials: failure to conduct adequate long-term carcinogenicity studies before bringing Roundup to market; ghostwriting of scientific literature to shape the public record on glyphosate’s safety; manipulation of regulatory submissions to the EPA; suppression of unfavorable research findings; and improper influence on the scientific assessments that regulators relied on. Each of these is a separate failure of the duty of care, and each can be proven through the company’s own internal documents — emails, memos, study designs, and communications with EPA reviewers that discovery can force into the light.
The defense will argue that EPA’s regulatory process was thorough and that Monsanto complied with all federal requirements. The counter is that compliance with a regulatory process you helped shape is not the same as exercising reasonable care — and a company that ghostwrites the science the regulator reads has not satisfied its duty to the consumer, regardless of what the label says.
Consumer Protection and Unfair Trade Practices
Many states have consumer protection statutes that prohibit deceptive marketing. These claims target not the product’s design or its label, but the representations Monsanto made about Roundup’s safety in advertising, marketing materials, and public statements. If Monsanto told consumers that Roundup was safe, that it was “safer than table salt,” that it did not cause cancer — and if those representations were false or misleading — a consumer protection claim may survive even after the failure-to-warn preemption.
Consumer protection claims vary significantly by state. Some states require proof of individual causation (that the deceptive marketing caused your specific injury). Others do not, which can provide an alternative damages pathway for plaintiffs whose causation evidence is thinner. Some states have shorter limitations periods for consumer protection claims. Missouri has its own consumer protection framework, and whether it applies to your Roundup case depends on the specific marketing representations you relied on and the timeline of your exposure and diagnosis. This is a state-specific question that requires individual analysis.
Medical Monitoring — For Those Exposed but Not Yet Diagnosed
If you used Roundup extensively but have not developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, you may be in a different category. Some jurisdictions recognize a claim for medical monitoring — the cost of ongoing surveillance for a disease you are at elevated risk of developing because of a known exposure. The viability of medical monitoring in Missouri and its interaction with FIFRA preemption is an open question that lower courts will have to address. If you are in this category, your urgency is different: you need to document your exposure now, before the evidence disappears, and you need to understand whether your state recognizes a monitoring claim at all.
The Defendant: Bayer AG and Monsanto Company
To understand why this litigation exists and why the Supreme Court ruling matters so much, you need to understand the corporate entity you are up against.
Monsanto Company developed, manufactured, and marketed Roundup herbicide for decades. It developed glyphosate — the active ingredient — in the 1970s. It controlled every labeling decision submitted to the EPA for approval. It ran the studies, commissioned the science, and shaped the regulatory record that the EPA relied on to approve the Roundup label without a cancer warning.
In 2018, Bayer AG, the German pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical giant, acquired Monsanto for approximately $63 billion. Bayer assumed the litigation defense and settlement responsibility for Roundup claims. When you sue over Roundup today, the caption says Monsanto Company, but the money, the lawyers, the defense strategy, and the settlement decisions come from Bayer.
This is a deep-pocket defendant with global operations in pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals. It is not a small company that will fold under the weight of litigation. It has already paid approximately $10 billion to settle prior Roundup claims. It has the resources to fight every surviving case, and the Supreme Court ruling has given it improved leverage to do so. But it also has material aggregate exposure — more than 60,000 lawsuits were pending as of the ruling, and even after dismissals of failure-to-warn-dependent claims, the surviving cases with viable alternative theories represent a financial exposure that gives Bayer a reason to settle rather than try every case.
The corporate structure matters for another reason: the internal documents. Monsanto’s internal corporate records — emails, memos, study designs, communications with EPA, scientific ghostwriting arrangements — are the backbone of negligence and punitive damages theories. Many of these documents have already been produced in prior bellwether trials, but protective orders may restrict access. Coordinating with counsel who have existing document productions is often critical to building a strong surviving case.
The Medicine: Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Glyphosate
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphatic system — the network of vessels and nodes that carries infection-fighting white blood cells throughout your body. It begins when lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell, develop abnormal changes that cause them to multiply uncontrollably. There are more than 70 subtypes of NHL, each with different characteristics, treatments, and prognoses. The most common aggressive subtype is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The most common indolent subtype is follicular lymphoma.
How Glyphosate May Cause NHL
The scientific question at the heart of every Roundup case is whether glyphosate — and the formulated product Roundup, which contains glyphosate plus other ingredients called surfactants that help it penetrate plant leaves — causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. This is general causation: does the substance cause the disease?
The scientific picture is contested, and that contest is the battlefield. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer — the World Health Organization’s specialized cancer agency — classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on evidence of cancer in laboratory animals and limited evidence of cancer in humans. The EPA, by contrast, has historically classified glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” Plaintiffs have challenged the EPA’s determination as scientifically deficient and improperly influenced by industry, pointing to internal Monsanto documents showing the company’s involvement in the regulatory process.
The mechanism by which glyphosate may cause NHL is not fully established, but proposed pathways include oxidative stress, DNA damage, and disruption of the gut microbiome — all of which can affect immune function and lymphocyte behavior. The surfactants in Roundup formulations may enhance the toxicity of glyphosate beyond what the active ingredient alone would cause, which is why design defect claims that target the full formulation, not just glyphosate, may carry more force than claims focused solely on the active ingredient.
What NHL Treatment Looks Like
If you have NHL, you know this part. If you are reading for a family member, here is what the treatment reality looks like.
Treatment depends on the subtype, the stage, and the patient’s overall health. For aggressive NHL, first-line treatment is typically R-CHOP chemotherapy — a combination of five drugs given in cycles over several months. For indolent NHL, treatment may be deferred until symptoms appear, or may involve targeted therapies like rituximab. For relapsed or refractory disease, the options escalate: high-dose chemotherapy followed by an autologous stem cell transplant (using the patient’s own stem cells), or, in some cases, an allogeneic transplant (using donor stem cells), CAR-T cell therapy, or clinical trials.
Each of these treatments carries its own cascade of costs, side effects, and future risks. Chemotherapy suppresses the immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to infections. Stem cell transplants require weeks of hospitalization and carry significant mortality risk. Survivors face lifelong surveillance for recurrence, secondary cancers, and long-term effects of treatment — heart damage from chemotherapy drugs, neuropathy, cognitive effects, and chronic fatigue.
The Causation Proof Problem
The defense will argue that your NHL came from something else. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma has multiple known risk factors — age, immune suppression, certain infections, family history — and many cases are classified as idiopathic, meaning no specific cause is identified. The defense will use that ambiguity to argue you cannot prove Roundup caused your cancer.
The counter is specific causation: a detailed exposure reconstruction showing the frequency, duration, and intensity of your Roundup use; a temporal relationship between your exposure and your diagnosis; the IARC classification supporting general causation; internal Monsanto documents showing the company knew of the risk; and expert testimony from board-certified oncologists, epidemiologists, and toxicologists who can opine that your exposure caused your disease. Post-preemption, this expert testimony is more critical than ever because the simpler failure-to-warn framework — which required only proof that Monsanto knew of the danger and omitted it from the label — is gone. Design defect and negligence claims require a stronger scientific foundation, built under the jurisdiction’s Daubert or Frye standard for expert admissibility.
What NHL Costs Over a Lifetime
The economic damage of non-Hodgkin lymphoma is enormous. Lifetime medical costs for an NHL patient — including chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, stem cell transplants, ongoing surveillance for recurrence, and management of treatment-related complications — frequently exceed $500,000 to $1 million or more, depending on the treatment intensity and whether the disease relapses. Each relapse escalates the cost dramatically. A stem cell transplant alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On top of medical costs, there are lost wages — the months or years of work missed during treatment and recovery — and lost earning capacity, if the disease or its treatment leaves you unable to return to the same work you did before. For a landscaper, a gardener, a farmer, a groundskeeper — people whose work may have brought them into contact with Roundup in the first place — the physical toll of NHL and its treatment can end a career.
Non-economic damages — the pain, the fear, the loss of the life you had planned — are substantial and are not capped in Missouri product liability cases. And punitive damages remain theoretically available on negligence and consumer protection theories, if the evidence shows Monsanto acted with reckless disregard for consumer safety. Internal documents showing ghostwriting of scientific literature, manipulation of regulatory submissions, or suppression of unfavorable studies would support a punitive damages argument. Whether punitive damages are available in your specific jurisdiction, and under what standards, is a state-specific question your lawyer must answer.
If someone you love died from NHL attributed to Roundup exposure, the family may have a wrongful death claim and a survival action — two separate legal paths, each with its own beneficiaries, damages, and deadlines.
The Evidence You Must Preserve Now
Every Roundup case — and especially every surviving case built on design defect and negligence — depends on evidence that is deteriorating right now. Some of it is in your possession. Some is in Monsanto’s files. Some is in the hands of employers, retailers, and medical providers. All of it is on a clock.
Your exposure history documentation. Specific causation — proving that your Roundup exposure caused your NHL — requires establishing the frequency, duration, and intensity of your use. This means purchase receipts (which fade), work records (which employers may destroy), witness statements from people who saw you use Roundup (people relocate and memories fade), and product containers with lot numbers (containers degrade and get discarded). If you still have Roundup containers, photograph them — including the lot numbers — and do not discard them. Write down your exposure history now, while your memory is fresh: when you used Roundup, where you bought it, how often you applied it, what concentrations you used, and for how many years.
Your medical records and pathology reports. These confirm your NHL diagnosis, subtype, treatment history, prognosis, and any recurrence. They are generally stable through your treatment providers, but you should collect them early to avoid provider record-retention lapses. Your pathology report — the document that identifies the specific subtype of NHL — is the foundation of your damages quantification and your specific causation opinion.
Monsanto internal corporate documents. These are the proof of negligence and punitive damages. They show what Monsanto knew about glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential, when it knew it, and what it did or did not do in response. Internal documents may include emails discussing unfavorable study results, memos about ghostwriting scientific literature, communications with EPA reviewers, and records of regulatory strategy. Many of these documents have been partially produced in prior bellwether trials, but protective orders may restrict access. Your lawyer should coordinate with co-counsel who have existing document productions to gain access to the corporate record that already exists.
EPA registration records. The federal administrative record of what Monsanto represented to the EPA about glyphosate safety — and whether the approved label was based on complete and accurate information — is stable but may require FOIA requests for internal deliberative materials. These records are relevant to negligence and fraud-based consumer protection claims because they show what the company told the regulator and whether it was truthful.
Expert causation opinions. Post-preemption, expert testimony is the make-or-break factor. Plaintiffs need board-certified oncologists, epidemiologists, and toxicologists who can opine on both general causation (glyphosate causes NHL) and specific causation (your exposure caused your cancer) under the jurisdiction’s Daubert or Frye standard. The defense will challenge these experts aggressively, arguing that the science is insufficient, that the studies are contradictory, and that the experts’ opinions are not reliable. These opinions must be developed before expert discovery deadlines, and the preemption ruling has raised the evidentiary bar — requiring stronger epidemiological and mechanistic opinions than the now-preempted failure-to-warn framework demanded.
The preservation letter — the document that orders the defendant and every relevant third party to freeze evidence before it can be legally destroyed — is the first thing a lawyer sends in a case like this. It goes out the day you call, not after the insurance company contacts you, not after you sign something, not after you wait to see how you feel. The evidence is dying on a schedule, and the schedule does not pause for grief.
What Your Case May Be Worth After the Ruling
We will not give you a number for your case on a webpage, because every case’s value depends on its specific facts — the duration and intensity of your Roundup use, your NHL subtype and treatment course, your age and earning history, the strength of your causation evidence, and the jurisdiction where your case is filed. But we can give you the framework that drives the number, and we can be honest about how the Supreme Court ruling has changed it.
Before the ruling, Roundup cases had produced significant verdicts — including a $25 million federal verdict that was affirmed on appeal, and aggregate settlements by Bayer totaling approximately $10 billion across tens of thousands of claims. Those results were built heavily on failure-to-warn theories. The failure-to-warn framework was more accessible because it required only proof that Monsanto knew of glyphosate’s carcinogenic potential and omitted a warning from the EPA-approved label. That framework is now preempted.
After the ruling, case values shift. The low end of the range — cases with weaker exposure documentation, less aggressive NHL subtypes, and thinner corporate-document access — may settle in the low six figures or face dismissal if the surviving theories cannot carry the case. The high end — cases with well-documented chronic exposure, confirmed NHL with a clear temporal relationship to Roundup use, access to internal Monsanto documents showing knowledge of carcinogenic risk, and strong expert causation testimony — may still reach into the millions. Missouri’s lack of a statutory cap on compensatory damages in product liability cases means the ceiling on economic and non-economic recovery is higher here than in states that cap damages.
Here is the honest bottom line: the ruling compresses values. Cases that would have settled for more under a failure-to-warn theory will settle for less, or will require more expensive and more uncertain litigation to reach a comparable result. But the cases that can prove design defect and negligence — the ones with the right evidence, the right experts, and the right legal strategy — still carry material value. Bayer knows this. The more than 60,000 pending claims, even after the expected dismissals, still represent aggregate exposure that incentivizes settlement rather than trying every case.
Bayer’s existing settlement structure may be recalibrated downward for new and unresolved cases given the improved litigation posture the ruling provides. That means the settlement offer you receive — if you receive one — may be lower than it would have been before the ruling. Understanding whether that offer is fair requires a lawyer who can value a design defect case, not just a failure-to-warn case.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The verdicts and settlements that came before the ruling were built on a legal theory the Supreme Court has now closed off. Your case will be built on what remains.
How Bayer Will Fight Your Surviving Claims
Bayer did not win the Supreme Court ruling by accident. The company pursued the preemption argument for years — it was rejected by the Ninth Circuit before the Third Circuit became the first federal appellate court to rule in Bayer’s favor, creating the circuit split that drew the Supreme Court’s attention. The company lobbied the federal government to file a brief supporting its position, and the Trump administration did so. This is a sophisticated, well-resourced defendant that knows how to win in court and in the political arena. Here is what they will do next, and how each move is countered.
Play 1: Move to Dismiss Everything, Arguing Design Defect Is Just Failure-to-Warn in Disguise
Bayer will file motions to dismiss or for summary judgment arguing that your design defect claim is preempted because it is essentially a failure-to-warn claim wearing a different label. If the claim depends on evidence that Monsanto knew about the cancer risk and did not warn, the defense will argue it is preempted regardless of what you call it.
The counter: Knowledge of danger is relevant to design defect independent of the label. A company that knows its product is dangerous and chooses to sell it anyway has made a design decision. The design defect claim should be framed around the formulation itself — the specific combination of glyphosate and surfactants — and whether that formulation was unreasonably dangerous when a safer alternative was feasible. The internal documents show knowledge, but the claim is about the product’s design, not its label.
Play 2: Challenge General Causation Under Daubert
Bayer will move to exclude your causation experts, arguing that the scientific evidence does not support a finding that glyphosate causes NHL in humans. They will point to the EPA’s classification, to studies that found no association, and to the absence of a proven biological mechanism. If the court excludes your experts, the case is over — no expert testimony, no causation, no case.
The counter: The IARC classification — “probably carcinogenic to humans” — is the world’s leading cancer authority’s assessment, based on a systematic review of the scientific literature. Multiple epidemiological studies have found associations between glyphosate exposure and NHL. Internal Monsanto documents may show the company’s own scientists had concerns. Your experts must be board-certified, must use reliable methodology, and must be prepared for a defense challenge that is now more aggressive because the easier failure-to-warn path is gone.
Play 3: Argue Specific Causation — Your Cancer Came From Something Else
Bayer will argue that NHL has many causes, that most cases are idiopathic, and that you cannot prove your specific cancer came from Roundup rather than age, genetics, immune function, or other environmental exposures. This is the defense’s strongest play in any toxic tort case, and it is especially powerful when the disease has multiple known risk factors.
The counter: Detailed exposure reconstruction — how often you used Roundup, for how many years, at what concentrations, and through what route (skin contact, inhalation during spraying). A temporal relationship between your exposure and your diagnosis. Expert testimony using differential diagnosis — a methodology that systematically rules out other causes and identifies the most likely one. The stronger your exposure documentation, the harder this defense is to mount.
Play 4: Run Out the Clock on the Statute of Limitations
Bayer may use the legal uncertainty created by the ruling to delay. The longer a case sits, the closer it gets to the statute of limitations deadline. The defense may file motions, request extensions, and push proceedings slowly — betting that the clock will run out before the case reaches trial.
The counter: Aggressive case management. Early expert disclosure. A lawyer who understands that the ruling does not pause the limitations clock and who moves the case forward, not sideways. The discovery-rule analysis — when did you know or should you have known that your NHL was connected to Roundup — is the gate, and it must be analyzed early and correctly for your state.
Play 5: Lowball Settlement Offers Built on the New Leverage
Bayer will use the ruling as leverage to offer less. The pitch to plaintiffs and their lawyers will be: the failure-to-warn claim is gone, your case is harder to prove, and you should take what we are offering now because it will only get worse.
The counter: The ruling changed the leverage, but it did not eliminate it. Bayer still faces tens of thousands of surviving claims. Design defect and negligence cases can still be won. Punitive damages are still available on negligence theories. The right response to a lowball offer is not to take it — it is to build a case strong enough that the offer improves, or that a jury sees what Bayer does not want it to see.
Missouri Law: Your Rights and the Deadline
The Supreme Court’s FIFRA preemption ruling applies nationwide — it overrides state-law failure-to-warn claims in every jurisdiction, including Missouri. But the surviving claims — design defect, negligence, consumer protection — are governed by state law, and Missouri’s legal framework has features that make it a comparatively strong venue for Roundup plaintiffs.
Missouri follows pure comparative fault. That means even if you are partly at fault — even if you did not wear gloves while spraying, or you used a higher concentration than the label recommended — your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, but it is never eliminated. In a state that follows modified comparative fault with a 50% or 51% bar, a plaintiff who is found 52% at fault recovers nothing. In Missouri, that same plaintiff would recover 48% of their damages. For a Roundup plaintiff, this is a meaningful advantage, because the defense will try to pin fault on the user — for not reading the label, for not wearing protective equipment, for using too much.
Missouri has no statutory cap on compensatory damages in product liability cases. Some states limit non-economic damages — the pain, suffering, emotional distress, and loss of quality of life that often represent the largest component of a cancer verdict. Missouri does not. The economic damages (medical bills, lost wages, future care) are uncapped, and the non-economic damages are also uncapped. This means a Missouri jury that hears your case and understands what NHL did to your life can award the full measure of your loss without a statutory ceiling cutting the number down.
Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims is five years — longer than the two- or three-year limitations periods many states impose. In toxic tort cases involving latent diseases like cancer, the discovery rule may mean the clock does not start running from the date of your exposure to Roundup, but from when you knew or reasonably should have known that your non-Hodgkin lymphoma was connected to your Roundup use. For most people, that clock starts at diagnosis, or when they first learned of the possible link between glyphosate and cancer through news reports, litigation announcements, or their doctor. But the discovery rule is not automatic and is not uniform — it depends on the specific facts of your case and the law of your jurisdiction. If you are in a state other than Missouri, your limitations period may be different and shorter.
If someone you love died from NHL that you believe was caused by Roundup exposure, Missouri has a separate wrongful-death statute of limitations that is shorter than the personal injury deadline. Families in this situation should not wait — the clock on a wrongful death claim runs differently than the clock on a personal injury claim, and missing it means the family’s case is gone forever.
Missouri’s venue landscape has historically been favorable for plaintiffs in mass tort cases. St. Louis City and St. Louis County courts have produced significant plaintiff verdicts in the Roundup and talc litigations, and Missouri juries have shown a willingness to hold corporate defendants accountable. The Supreme Court ruling changes the legal theories available, but it does not change the venue or the jury pool — and a Missouri jury that hears evidence of what Monsanto knew, what it did with that knowledge, and what happened to the people who used its product may still return a substantial verdict on the surviving claims.
The Proof Story: How a Surviving Case Is Built
Here is how a Roundup case is actually built after the Supreme Court ruling — the chronological walk from the day you call a lawyer to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to Bayer, to Monsanto, to any employer whose records document your Roundup use, to any retailer whose purchase records show what you bought. The letter orders them to freeze every document, every email, every internal memo, every study, every communication with the EPA. It also orders preservation of your employment records, your purchase history, and any physical evidence you still hold. The letter is not a formality. It is the first shot in a spoliation fight — if evidence disappears after the letter is on file, the court can impose sanctions, including an adverse-inference instruction telling the jury they may assume the lost evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says.
Weeks two through four. Your medical records are collected — pathology reports, treatment records, imaging, lab work, physician notes. Your exposure history is documented — a detailed timeline of when, where, and how you used Roundup, with corroboration from witnesses, receipts, and work records. Your lawyer begins identifying the right experts: a board-certified oncologist who can opine on causation, an epidemiologist who can address the general causation literature, a toxicologist who can address the mechanism of harm, and potentially a life-care planner who can project your future medical needs.
Months two through six. The complaint is filed — leading with design defect and negligence, with failure-to-warn removed or relegated to a non-preempted consumer-fraud framing where state law permits. Discovery begins. The plaintiff serves document demands on Monsanto seeking the internal corporate record: pre-registration testing, post-registration adverse event reports, internal scientific assessments, communications with EPA, ghostwriting arrangements, and suppression of unfavorable studies. The defense serves discovery on the plaintiff: medical history, exposure history, prior occupations, other chemical exposures, family cancer history.
Months six through twelve. Deppositions. The plaintiff’s experts are deposed by the defense, and the defense’s experts are deposed by the plaintiff. Monsanto’s corporate representatives are deposed — the scientists, the regulatory affairs personnel, the executives who made decisions about what to study, what to disclose, and what to market. These depositions are where the internal documents come alive — where a Monsanto scientist has to explain under oath why a study was redesigned after initial results showed a problem, or why a paper was ghostwritten under a third-party academic’s name.
Months twelve through eighteen. Expert challenges. The defense moves to exclude the plaintiff’s causation experts under Daubert. The plaintiff moves to exclude the defense’s experts. The court rules. If the plaintiff’s experts survive, the case moves toward trial. If they are excluded, the case may be dismissed — which is why expert selection is the single most important strategic decision in a post-preemption Roundup case.
Trial. If the case reaches trial, the jury hears the surviving theories. The plaintiff’s experts explain how glyphosate causes NHL. The plaintiff’s lawyer walks the jury through Monsanto’s internal documents — what the company knew, when it knew it, and what it did with that knowledge. The defense argues the science is uncertain, the EPA said the product is safe, and the plaintiff’s cancer came from something else. The jury decides.
Not every case reaches trial. Many settle — at mediation, at a settlement conference, or through Bayer’s global resolution framework. The ruling changes the leverage, but it does not eliminate it. The strength of your evidence, the quality of your experts, and the skill of your lawyer determine where your case falls on the spectrum between dismissal and a verdict that holds Monsanto accountable.
Your First Steps: What to Do Now
If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, here is what you should do — and what you should not do — in the days and weeks ahead.
Get your medical treatment first. If you are in active treatment for NHL, your health comes before anything else. But while you are in treatment, make sure your medical records are complete — every pathology report, every treatment note, every imaging study. These documents are the foundation of both your damages and your causation case, and they are easier to collect while you are in the system than years later.
Write down your exposure history. Do this now, while your memory is as fresh as it will ever be. Write down every job, every property, every season where you used Roundup. Include the formulation if you remember it — concentrate, ready-to-use, professional grade. Include the frequency — weekly, monthly, annually for decades. Include the method — backpack sprayer, hand-held sprayer, truck-mounted rig. Include who witnessed your use — coworkers, family members, neighbors. This document is the skeleton of your specific causation case.
Preserve physical evidence. If you still have Roundup containers — even empty ones — photograph them, including the lot numbers. Do not discard them. If you have purchase receipts, work orders, or employment records that document your Roundup use, gather them. Receipts fade and containers degrade. Witnesses relocate. The evidence is dying on a schedule.
Do not sign anything from Bayer, Monsanto, or any claims administrator. If you receive a settlement offer, a release form, or a claims form in the mail, do not sign it without having a lawyer review it. A release you sign today may extinguish claims you do not even know you have — including the surviving design defect and negligence claims that the Supreme Court ruling left intact.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. Not to an insurance adjuster, not to a claims administrator, not to an investigator who calls and says they just want to hear your side of the story. Anything you say can and will be used to minimize your claim. The friendly voice on the phone is not your friend.
Check the deadline. Missouri’s five-year statute of limitations for personal injury may be longer than many states, but it is not infinite. If the discovery rule applies, the clock may start from when you knew or should have known your NHL was connected to Roundup — but that is a legal analysis that depends on your specific facts, and it is not a gamble you want to take. If someone died from NHL, the wrongful death deadline may be shorter. Do not wait to find out.
Call a lawyer who understands the post-ruling landscape. Not every lawyer who handled Roundup cases before the ruling is equipped to handle them after. The skill set has changed. Design defect and negligence cases require different experts, different evidence, and different strategy than failure-to-warn cases. You need a lawyer who has read the Supreme Court ruling, understands what it means for your specific claims, and has a plan for building a surviving case — not a lawyer who files the same complaint and hopes the court does not notice.
Why Our Team
Attorney911 is The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers who handle toxic-tort, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases in Missouri and nationwide. We work with local counsel in Missouri where required, and we bring the resources, the experience, and the trial-readiness to build a case around the surviving theories the Supreme Court left on the table.
Ralph Manginello — our Managing Partner — has been licensed since November 6, 1998. That is more than 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he reads the Supreme Court’s ruling and understands not just what it says but what it means for the people the news cameras do not point at. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and handles federal matters across jurisdictions. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña — our associate attorney — spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he joined our side of the table. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like you. He knows how claim valuation works from the inside — how the defense sets reserves, how it selects IME doctors, how it uses surveillance and social-media mining, and how it engineers delay toward the statute of limitations. He uses that knowledge for injured clients now. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We handle toxic tort claims and catastrophic injury cases on a contingency basis. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. Your first consultation is free. You can reach us at 1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911 — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service.
We are not the counsel of record on the Monsanto Co. v. Durnell case or any other case described in the news coverage of the Supreme Court ruling. This page is legal information and education for people in Missouri and nationwide who are facing the question the ruling created: what do I do now? The answer is: you find out whether your case can survive on the theories the Supreme Court did not touch, and you build it with lawyers who know how to build it.
Hablamos Español. If your family prefers to work in Spanish, Lupe conducts full consultations without an interpreter — the rights, the deadlines, the evidence, and the strategy, in the language you actually think in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my Roundup case over because of the Supreme Court ruling?
No, not necessarily. The ruling preempted only failure-to-warn claims — the theory that Monsanto should have put a cancer warning on the Roundup label. Design defect, general negligence, and consumer protection claims survived. If your case was built entirely on failure-to-warn, that specific claim will likely be dismissed, but your case may be amendable to include the surviving theories. If you have not yet filed, you can build your case from the start around design defect and negligence.
Did the Supreme Court say Roundup is safe?
No. The Court did not address whether glyphosate causes cancer. It did not evaluate the scientific evidence. It addressed only a legal question: whether FIFRA, the federal pesticide law, blocks state-law claims that demand a warning label different from the one the EPA approved. The ruling is about preemption doctrine, not about product safety. The EPA’s classification of glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic” and the IARC’s classification as “probably carcinogenic” remain in tension, and that scientific dispute is unchanged by the ruling.
Can I still file a new Roundup lawsuit?
Yes. New cases can be filed on the surviving theories — design defect, negligence, and consumer protection. The statute of limitations has not been paused by the ruling. In Missouri, the personal injury statute of limitations is five years, and the discovery rule may apply if you did not know your NHL was connected to Roundup until recently. But every state’s deadline is different, and waiting is the single most common way a valid case becomes a dead case.
What if I already have a lawyer and they have not mentioned the ruling?
Ask them directly. Ask whether your case includes design defect and negligence claims. Ask whether they have analyzed how the preemption ruling affects your specific complaint. Ask what their strategy is for the surviving theories. If your lawyer’s Roundup practice was built primarily on failure-to-warn and they have not adapted, you need to understand whether your case is being handled by someone who reads Supreme Court rulings and responds — or someone who files the same complaint and hopes.
How much is my Roundup case worth now?
No lawyer can answer that question without reviewing your specific facts — your exposure history, your medical records, your NHL subtype and treatment, and the jurisdiction where your case would be filed. The Supreme Court ruling has compressed values, particularly for cases that relied primarily on failure-to-warn. Cases with strong design defect evidence, well-documented chronic exposure, confirmed NHL with a clear temporal relationship, and access to internal Monsanto documents retain significant value. Missouri’s lack of a damages cap and its pure comparative fault rule are advantages. Any specific dollar figure requires an individual case evaluation.
What if I used Roundup but have not been diagnosed with NHL?
You may have a medical monitoring claim, depending on your state’s law. Medical monitoring is a claim for the cost of ongoing surveillance for a disease you are at elevated risk of developing because of a known exposure. Whether medical monitoring is recognized in your jurisdiction, and whether it survives FIFRA preemption analysis, are open questions that depend on your state’s law. If you are in this category, your priority is documenting your exposure now — before the evidence disappears — and getting a case evaluation to understand whether your state recognizes a monitoring claim.
What if someone in my family died from NHL after using Roundup?
The family may have a wrongful death claim and a survival action. These are two separate legal paths with different beneficiaries, different damage categories, and different deadlines. Missouri has a separate wrongful-death statute of limitations that is shorter than the personal injury deadline. If someone you love died from NHL and you believe Roundup exposure was the cause, do not wait — the deadline for a wrongful death claim may be running now, and the design defect and negligence theories that survived the Supreme Court ruling are available to the estate and the family.
The ruling said the plaintiff was left without a remedy. Does that mean no one can win?
The dissenting justices wrote that the ruling “ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered.” That is a criticism of the majority’s holding, not a statement that no remedy exists. The majority closed the failure-to-warn door. The surviving theories — design defect, negligence, consumer protection — are still open. The dissent’s point is that the majority should not have closed the failure-to-warn door, not that the plaintiff has no options at all. Your case may still proceed on the surviving theories, though it will be harder to build than it would have been before the ruling.
Does the EPA’s approval of the Roundup label mean the product is safe?
No. The EPA approved the label — the words and warnings printed on the product. The EPA did not certify that Roundup is safe for chronic consumer use, and the EPA’s own classification of glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic” has been challenged as scientifically deficient and improperly influenced by industry. The IARC, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The Supreme Court’s ruling makes the EPA’s labeling authority exclusive for warning purposes, but it does not make the EPA’s safety assessment unchallengeable in a design defect or negligence case.
How long do I have to file a Roundup lawsuit in Missouri?
Missouri’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims is five years. In toxic tort cases, the discovery rule may mean the clock starts when you knew or should have known that your NHL was connected to Roundup — not when you were exposed. For wrongful death, the deadline is shorter. But the discovery rule is not automatic and depends on your specific facts. The deadline is a hard gate — miss it and the case is over no matter how strong the evidence is. If you are unsure whether your deadline has passed, the safest move is to call a lawyer today and ask.
Can I still get punitive damages in a Roundup case?
Punitive damages remain theoretically available on negligence and consumer protection theories, if the evidence shows Monsanto acted with reckless disregard for consumer safety. Internal documents showing ghostwriting of scientific literature, manipulation of EPA submissions, or suppression of unfavorable studies would support a punitive damages argument. Whether punitive damages are available in your specific jurisdiction, and under what standards, is a state-specific question. Missouri does not cap punitive damages in product liability cases by statute, though constitutional due process limits apply.
Will Bayer offer me a settlement, and should I take it?
Bayer may offer a settlement, particularly for cases it views as strong on the surviving theories. The ruling has given Bayer improved leverage, which means settlement offers may be lower than they would have been before the ruling. Whether an offer is fair depends on the strength of your case, the cost and risk of litigation, and the value of your damages. You should not accept any settlement offer without having a lawyer evaluate it against the full value of your case — including future medical costs, lost earning capacity, and non-economic damages. A quick check from an insurance company is almost always worth less than what a prepared case can command.
Contact Attorney911
If you used Roundup and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the Supreme Court ruling changed the legal landscape — but it did not erase your rights. The question now is whether your case can survive on the theories the Court left intact, and whether you have a lawyer who knows how to build those theories into a case that holds Monsanto accountable.
Contact us today for a free consultation. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service. No fee unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different, and the surviving theories available to you depend on your specific exposure history, your medical condition, your jurisdiction, and the deadlines that apply to your claims. Call us, and we will tell you honestly whether we can help — and if we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that too.