Column: In Roundup litigation, a funny thing is happening on the way to forum selection

Bayer AG

01/06/2026 22:40

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.
By Jenna Greene

    June 1 (Reuters) - Forum fights are a standard part of high-stakes litigation, with lawyers sometimes spending months or years arguing over whether a case belongs in federal or state court.
It can be a technical, even tedious slog — but in Bayer's proposed $7.25 billion Roundup class action settlement, the battle has taken an unusually consequential turn.
A group of 10 litigants who object to the deal, which was filed in Missouri state court, are trying to move the case into federal court. If they succeed — a big if — the objectors could upend a settlement poised to resolve tens of thousands of claims alleging the weedkiller causes cancer.
The 10 objectors, who say they’ve been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after years of using Roundup, argue the agreement is the product of "collusion" between Bayer and class action lawyers who stand to receive $675 million in attorneys' fees. They contend the case belongs before a federal judge in San Francisco who has overseen similar Roundup claims for a decade — and who has said he has “grave concerns” about the proposed settlement.
Bayer and class counsel are united in their opposition to the procedural gambit. The objectors have no right to transfer the case, they say, describing the effort in legal filings last week as an attempt to “delay and disrupt, presumably to gain leverage over the settling parties.”
The fight flips the usual forum calculus on its head, with the objectors — rather than Bayer — pushing for federal court, where large disputes between parties from different states often end up.
Corporate defendants typically want to litigate in the federal system, drawn by stricter procedural rules that can make it easier to dismiss weak cases, broader jury pools and life‑tenured judges seen as more insulated from local pressures.
But this isn’t a typical case.
Bayer is facing approximately 65,000 claims in U.S. state and federal courts from plaintiffs who say they developed ​cancer after using Roundup at home or on the job. The German drugmaking and crop science company, which acquired Roundup when it purchased St. Louis-based Monsanto in 2018, ⁠has said studies show Roundup's key ingredient glyphosate is safe.
A Bayer spokesperson said the attempt to move the case to federal court “has no merit as the class is properly before a Missouri state court where the overwhelming majority of remaining claims have been filed.”
To date, 24 Roundup cases have been tried to a verdict, with 11 wins for the plaintiffs, including a $2.25 billion award (later reduced to $400 million) in 2024 to a Pennsylvania man. Bayer has prevailed in 13 trials, according to court papers.

    The nationwide settlement would resolve nearly all claims by plaintiffs who allege exposure to the weedkiller caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. When the agreement was announced in February, Bayer and class counsel framed it as a win-win. Bayer said it resolved the “uncertainty” of litigation, while plaintiffs' lawyers said the deal ​guarantees compensation at a time when a pending Supreme Court ruling could threaten cancer victims’ ability to prevail on key legal claims.
But the objectors say the compensation is too low, opting out is too hard, and that the deal wrongly forecloses litigation by Roundup users who get sick in the future.
Right now, however, the fight isn’t about the merits of the settlement. It’s about which court will have the power to review it.
Missouri state court Judge Timothy Boyer granted preliminary approval to the deal in March. He set a final approval hearing for July 9 before the forum fight derailed the process.
The next step belongs to U.S. District Judge Henry Edward Autrey in St. Louis. He’ll decide whether the case should be sent back to Boyer in state court, or if it should stay in federal court. If it does, it will likely be routed to U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, the judge who previously criticized the deal and who is overseeing a much smaller set of cases that make up the federal multi-district Roundup litigation.
The key question now: Do the objectors have standing to move the case to federal court?
Ordinarily, the rule is simple: only a defendant can do so. The principle was laid out in a 1941 U.S. Supreme Court decision and reiterated in the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.
To get around that requirement, the objectors rely on a little-used legal doctrine known as realignment. In limited circumstances, it allows courts to reshuffle the parties based on their true interests rather than their formal designation as a "plaintiff" or "defendant."
Keller Postman partner JJ Snidow, who along with firm co‑founder Ashley Keller represents the objectors, argues that their clients should be recast as the true defendants because both Bayer and class counsel want the settlement approved.
“They are completely aligned in interest,” Snidow told me, leaving no one but the objectors on the other side of the "v" to oppose the deal.
In court papers, Bayer and class counsel from firms including Seeger Weiss argue that controlling Supreme Court precedent doesn’t allow the objectors to move the case. The right to do so is only available to the party sued by the original plaintiff, they say — here that’s Bayer — pointing to a 2019 decision by the high court in Home Depot v. Jackson.
If the objectors don’t like the settlement, they can opt out or raise their concerns before Judge Boyer, Bayer lawyers from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; and Dowd Bennett wrote in a May 26 motion to remand. “What they cannot do is disrupt the ongoing state court proceedings to consider that settlement with a frivolous, untimely removal.”
For Bayer and class counsel, the stakes are obvious: whether their multibillion-dollar deal survives intact. For the objectors, the question is whether they can force a second look in a different courtroom.
Lawyers have always fought over forum selection. What’s different here is how far that fight has been pushed — past questions of jurisdiction and into the heart of the case itself.

(Reporting by Jenna Greene)