{"id":3083,"date":"2024-10-23T22:16:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T22:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/division-over-monsantos-preemption-defense-deepens-as-mass-court-tosses-roundup-claims\/"},"modified":"2024-10-23T22:16:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T22:16:39","slug":"division-over-monsantos-preemption-defense-deepens-as-mass-court-tosses-roundup-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/division-over-monsantos-preemption-defense-deepens-as-mass-court-tosses-roundup-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Division Over Monsanto’s Preemption Defense Deepens as Mass. Court Tosses Roundup Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Massachusetts\u00a0state court ruling marks another victory for Monsanto on a legal issue that has\u00a0divided courts across the national Roundup litigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Justice Salim Rodriguez Tabit of the Essex County Superior Court held Monday that federal law preempts a plaintiff’s claims that Monsanto failed to warn about the alleged dangers of its weed killer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The holding<\/a> accepts a legal defense from Monsanto that has, until recently, found little success. But the company recently gained new traction on the argument\u00a0with a win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a case called\u00a0Schaffner v. Monsanto<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That Third Circuit ruling<\/a>\u00a0helped secure Monsanto’s Massachusetts state court win in Cardillo v. Monsanto <\/em>on Monday, with Tabit granting summary judgment to the defendant on several of the plaintiff’s claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Like many plaintiffs in the Roundup litigation, plaintiff Phyllis Cardillo\u00a0alleged that the label on Monsanto’s weed killer\u00a0had a duty under state law to include a cancer warning on its product. And like the defense has\u00a0often argued in the Roundup litigation, Monsanto countered that federal law preempts Cardillo’s state law failure-to-warn claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company asserted that a federal statute regulating pesticides bars states from imposing pesticide label requirements that differ from national regulations. Monsanto argued that its alleged violation of Massachusetts duty-to-warn requirements did not amount to a violation of labeling requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tabit agreed, drawing heavily on the Third Circuit’s Schaffner ruling to hold that FIFRA preempted Cardillo’s state law failure-to-warn claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tabit noted in his memorandum that different courts have reached different conclusions on the preemption of state failure-to-warn claims against Monsanto.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Indeed, the Third Circuit in\u00a0Schaffner<\/em>\u00a0departed from two other\u00a0federal circuit courts that had previously held that such claims were not preempted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, Tabit held, “this court finds Schaffner<\/em>‘s reasoning persuasive.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tabit granted Monsanto’s motion for summary judgment in full on Cardillo’s claims of failure to warn and negligent misrepresentation and\/or fraud in full, and on the plaintiffs claims of negligence and unfair and deceptive trade practices “only insofar as they allege a failure to warn.” Tabit also denied the defendant’s motion for summary judgment on Cardillo’s design defect claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kimberly Spangler-Louty of Kirkendall Dwyer, who represents Cardillo, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A spokesperson for Monsanto said in a statement that the company is “pleased with the court’s decision, which found ‘Schaffner’s reasoning persuasive,’ even though the Third Circuit case is not ‘binding’ in Massachusetts.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The spokesperson went on to contrast the Massachusetts ruling with recent rulings<\/a> on the issue out of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Surprisingly however,”\u00a0the spokesperson added, “Pennsylvania state courts repeatedly refused to apply the Schaffner<\/em> decision, which is binding on federal courts in the same state.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has so far ruled against Monsanto on post-Schaffner<\/em> preemption arguments in three different Roundup cases, rejecting the company’s assertion that the court is bound to follow the Third Circuit’s ruling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Monsanto spokesperson said the company intends to bring the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court and is evaluating what cases will serve as the best vehicle for an appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The spokesperson said, “This conflict in law, as well as the federal circuit split, reinforce the need for U.S. Supreme Court review on the cross-cutting question of federal preemption that is central to the Roundup litigation nationwide.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A Massachusetts\u00a0state court ruling marks another victory for Monsanto on a legal issue that has\u00a0divided courts across the national Roundup litigation. Justice Salim Rodriguez Tabit of the Essex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[300,143,1894,2299,685,801,3000,3001,1653,2449],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-claims","tag-court","tag-deepens","tag-defense","tag-division","tag-mass","tag-monsantos","tag-preemption","tag-roundup","tag-tosses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}