Federal Judge In Bay Area Approves Settlement Of Roundup Breach Of Warranty Claims, But Slashes Legal Fees

A federal judge in the Bay Area approved a class action settlement involving consumer warranty claims relating to Roundup, the pesticide manufactured and distributed by Monsanto, but slashed the legal fees requested by plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The settlement involved a nationwide class of consumers who purchased Roundup products and allegedly suffered economic damages because the products did not bear a warning that they might cause cancer.

The plaintiffs said the purchasers would have paid less if the warning had been given, and therefore they were entitled to a remedy for overpaying.

The settlement will create a fund of between $23 and $45 million, to be divided among an estimated 230,000 claims that were submitted.

The damages in the case were a far cry from the billions of dollars at stake in prior proposed class action settlements involving personal injuries allegedly caused by Roundup.

The popular weed-killer contains the chemical glyphosate and is widely used in gardening, lawn maintenance and landscaping. Glyphosate is a carcinogen that allegedly can cause non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Tens of thousands of personal injury claims have been filed against Monsanto in state and federal courts and many thousands more have been asserted outside of court.

In the current settlement, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria — the same judge who previously rejected class settlements of Roundup personal injury claims — found that the proposed resolution was “fair, reasonable, and adequate,” and was entered into in good faith.

Judge Chhabria, who is known to subject class action settlements (and the fees claimed by class lawyers) to careful and sometimes withering scrutiny, found that the various claims in the case (false advertising, consumer fraud, breach of warranty, and other economic-loss claims) were appropriately treated in the settlement.

He found that claimants who purchased the products would likely recover more than 20 percent of the average retail price they paid. Most importantly, they would not give up their claims for any personal injuries they have already suffered or will suffer in the future.

In order to approve a class action settlement, a court must be satisfied that the plaintiffs in the class are getting a fair and reasonable settlement, in other words, that the settlement is a reasonably good deal. That means that plaintiffs’ lawyers — even though traditionally confident and cocky when discussing the merits of their case — must be careful to make sure that the court understands their case also has warts and wrinkles.

In seeking approval of the settlement, plaintiffs told the court, “although plaintiffs believe in their claims, they recognize that success on the merits is not guaranteed.”

Judge Chhabria readily agreed, noting that if the cases were litigated to judgment, courts might not have accepted plaintiffs’ theory of liability or could have thrown out their calculation of damages.

With those outcomes a real possibility, Chhabria was persuaded that the negotiated resolution was in the best interest of the class, especially because he found that the recovery will likely amount to “more than two-thirds of plaintiffs expert’s estimate of best-case damages were this case to proceed to trial.”

But while the court found that plaintiffs’ lawyers “fairly and adequately” represented the class, he cut their requested legal fees from $11.25 million to $5.75 million and noted that the savings would flow to benefit the members of the class.

Chhabria said the claims the class asserted were not very strong.

While he said that “counsel ended up achieving a good settlement for class members given the weakness of the claims asserted, the benefits those class members receive from the resolution of these weak claims are, in the grand scheme of things, insubstantial.”

The judge focused on the fact that with approximately 230,000 claims submitted, individual recoveries in the case will be modest.

In the judge’s opinion, “A very small portion of the class will receive a relatively small amount of money. Nor has Monsanto been caused by this case to put a warning on Roundup labels or to change its behavior in any other way.”

Moreover, in his opinion “class counsel was not required to do much work in this case to achieve this relatively meager benefit for the class members.”