US judge rejects Bayer's US$2 billion deal to resolve future Roundup lawsuits

LONDON: A US judge rejected Bayer's US$2 billion class action proposal to resolve future lawsuits alleging its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, according to a court filing on Wednesday.

Bayer has committed up to US$9.6 billion to resolve some 125,000 existing claims linking Roundup to non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The proposed class action settlement was aimed at claims by people who have been exposed to the weedkiller and who become sick in the future.

Bayer has said that decades of studies have shown that Roundup and its main active ingredient glyphosate are safe for humans.

US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco called parts of Bayer's proposal "clearly unreasonable" in a six-page order denying the request to approve the plan.