In late June 2020, Bayer, who acquired Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, announced that it had reached one of the largest settlements in the history of U.S. civil litigation. The settlement agreement supposedly totaled over $10 billion and was entered into by 25 law firms around the country.
“This is nothing like the closure they’re trying to imply,” Attorney Fletch Trammell told the New York Times after the announcement. “It’s like putting out part of a house fire.”
As it turns out, there never was a settlement in the first place. In late August, 2020, when asked by US Federal Judge Vincent Chhabria about the progress of settlement, attorneys for Bayer admitted that there wasn’t one. Instead, Bayer and dozens of firms around the country spent the summer “in negotiations” that amounted to nothing.