On Tuesday, not quite a month after the Central District of California dismissed allegations that Home Depot should have provided warnings that Roundup herbicide contains glyphosate, the plaintiff appealed the court’s decision to the Ninth Circuit. The danger of glyphosate is debated, but some claim that it has caused cancer.
The one-page Notice of Appeal related to the December 16 Order was filed by Gillian Wade with Milstein Jackson Fairchild & Wade, LLP. The court case was docketed in the Ninth Circuit on the same day, and the appellant, James Weeks, was asked to submit a mediation questionnaire by January 19 and an opening brief by March 15.
The putative class-action lawsuit argued that the retailer did not sufficiently warn its customers about the purported dangers from using Roundup, and should have placed warnings in signs in the store and on product packaging. Currently, a consolidated lawsuit contains hundreds of lawsuits against Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup, asking for the company to pay damages for cancers and other injuries allegedly received from using the product, specifically non-hodgkin’s lymphoma. Monsanto’s parent company, Bayer, has agreed to settle many of those claims in a $10 billion settlement.
Judge John Holcomb dismissed the complaint in December. He ruled that the plaintiff’s arguments were flawed as they attempted to “plead around” Proposition 65, which requires warnings on products that could cause cancer in California, but did not have the scientific support because the safety of glyphosate, and thus Roundup, is widely disputed. The judge had previously given Weeks an opportunity to amend the complaint, and decided that another opportunity would not likely fix the issues and the case should be dismissed.
The plaintiff is represented by Milstein Jackson Fairchild & Wade, LLP. The defendant is represented by Unberg Zipser LLP, King & Spalding LLP, and Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP.
