U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria has identified nearly 60 Roundup cases from four different states to be prepared for remand and individual trial dates.
According to a pretrial order issued on June 14, seventeen claims originating in California district courts (selected by plaintiffs) and five claims transferred to the MDL from the District of Nebraska (selected by defendants), were identified to go through case-specific finding and dispositive motions over the remainder of this year for the first wave. It will be followed by a second wave, with thirty claims from Illinois district courts (selected by plaintiffs) and seven from North Carolina district courts (selected by defendants), which could be set for remand by mid-2020. The Court will issue a separate order discussing the timeline and procedure for severing multi-plaintiff cases. According to the court documents, plaintiffs should submit Plaintiff Fact Sheets (including all relevant authorizations) 10 days from the issue of the order for the first wave and 21 days for the second.
Bayer AG overtook Monsanto last June and is currently defending about 15,000 Roundup cancer lawsuits filed nationwide. At least 1,300 of the Roundup cases are pending in the federal court system. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria is presiding over all the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL No. 2741; In Re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation) in the Northern District of California.
