Weedkiller maker moves to settle suit over Parkinson’s disease claims

Besieged by thousands of lawsuits alleging that its paraquat weedkiller causes Parkinson’s disease, its manufacturer, Syngenta, has entered into an agreement aimed at settling large swaths of those claims.

A court filing on Monday confirmed that a letter of agreement between the parties had been signed. In a court hearing on Tuesday, one of the lead plaintiff lawyers, Khaldoun Baghdadi, said the terms of the settlement should be completed within 30 days.

Syngenta did not respond to a request for comment.

The move to settle comes amid mounting calls from state and federal lawmakers to ban paraquat, and as growing numbers of Parkinson’s patients blame the company for not warning them of paraquat risks. Numerous scientific studies have linked Parkinson’s to exposure to paraquat, a weedkiller commonly used in agriculture, though Syngenta has said the weight of scientific evidence shows its pesticide does not cause the disease.

In response to past reporting, the company said that no “peer-reviewed scientific publication has established a causal connection between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease”.

The agreement would not resolve all of the cases filed in the United States against Syngenta, but could resolve the majority of them.

As of mid-April, there were more than 5,800 active lawsuits pending in what is known as multidistrict litigation (MDL) being overseen by a federal court in Illinois. There were more than 450 other cases filed in California, and many more scattered in state courts around the country.

The agreement notice applies to people whose lawsuits are part of the MDL, and could provide settlements for plaintiffs in the cases outside the MDL as well, said Baghdadi.

Syngenta’s effort to settle the litigation before any high-profile trials comes after Monsanto’s owner, Bayer, was rocked by similar litigation alleging its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer. After the company lost the first Roundup trial, its stock price plummeted, and Bayer has spent years and billions of dollars fighting to end the ongoing litigation.

Lawyers for paraquat plaintiffs in cases outside the MDL expressed frustration with the situation, saying they were not included in the settlement discussions, and were not being given details about the settlement.

They fear their cases may be delayed or otherwise negatively affected by a settlement that benefits some plaintiffs but may not actually provide value to the majority of them.

“These plaintiffs are dying every day,” Majed Nachawati, a lawyer whose clients are outside the MDL, told a judge in a California court hearing on Tuesday on the matter. He said the news of the settlement was a “shock” because he was not apprised of the settlement negotiations by the other plaintiffs’ lawyers, as he should have been.

Paraquat has become one of the most widely used weedkilling chemicals in the world. In the United States, the chemical is used in orchards, wheat fields, pastures where livestock graze, cotton fields and elsewhere.

Internal Syngenta documents revealed by the Guardian and the New Lede show the company was aware many years ago of scientific evidence that paraquat could affect the brain in ways that cause Parkinson’s, and that it secretly sought to influence scientific research to counter the evidence of harm.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group