Anyone can sue and for just about anything. Whether you can win or not is a different story. Perhaps the more important question is whether you can find a good lawyer willing to take your case.
Prosecuting a Roundup lawsuit can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most lawyers, of course, take these cases on a contingency fee. That means they have an interest in seeing you win. It also means they only consider viable cases.
Many lawyers don’t like to share their trade secrets or formulas. We think an educated client is the best client. We also don’t like to waste anyone’s time. With that in mind, we are happy to share how we screen new Roundup cancer lawsuit cases.
Roundup Lawsuit Claims – A Quick Summary
Roundup is a popular herbicide invited by Monsanto. Recently Monsanto was acquired by Bayer, a German company best known for making aspirin.
The active ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate. On the market for decades, Roundup and other glyphosate based herbicides have become the number one bestselling weed killer worldwide.
Recently there is been a surge in concern that Roundup causes cancer. [To learn more on the science and medical evidence, visit our Roundup Cancer Lawsuit Lawyer page.] The World Health Organization, the State of California and many scientists and physicians believe there is a link between glyphosate and certain cancers. Bayer – Monsanto deny those claims.
The matter is now in the hands of the courts. There have been three cases that have gone to trial. Monsanto lost all three and lost big. Juries have hit the company with verdicts of $78 million, $80 million and $2 billion. These were all single cases and not class actions involving hundreds of claims.
Since those victories, thousands of people have filed lawsuits and late night TV is filled with paid actors soliciting new Roundup cases.
In the paragraphs below, we will explain what we look for when screening new Roundup cancer cases and why. As we noted above, an educated client is a great client.
Roundup Cancer Lawsuits and Types of Injuries
Roundup and glyphosate have been blamed for everything under the sun. You name it, we probably have had someone ask. Several people wanted us to represent them because their dog was ill and somehow their pet’s illness was caused by Roundup.
They may be right but there isn’t the scientific evidence to back it up.
The diseases and illnesses that are often attributed to Roundup include:
- Non-Hodgkins lymphoma
- Leukemia
- Myeloma
- Liver damage
- Diabetes
- Kidney disease
- Thyroid disease
- Parkinson’s disease
- Multiple sclerosis
- Breathing problems
- Lou Gehrig’s disease
- Reproductive issues and sterility
That’s an awful lot but few lawyers will take cases for anything but Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Why? Because there isn’t enough medical science to prove some of these cases yet. Evidence rules say that the victim (plaintiff) has the burden of proof. Mere exposure and a subsequent illness are not enough. That’s why most lawyers are limiting their case to people suffering from just one type of blood cancer.
[By the way, we are always looking for a whistleblower who is willing to share what Monsanto knows. We suspect the company knows the answers to Roundup’s link to other diseases.]
Currently we will accept Roundup or glyphosate users suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the following variations:
- Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma,
- Angioimmunoblastic Lymphoma,
- Blastic NK-Cell Lymphoma,
- Burkitt’s Lymphoma, Burkitt-like Lymphoma (Small Non-Cleaved Cell Lymphoma),
- Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia/Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma,
- Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma,
- Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma,
- Enteropathy-Type T-Cell Lymphoma,
- Follicular Lymphoma, Hepatosplenic Gamma-Delta T-Cell Lymphoma,
- Lymphoblastic Lymphoma,
- Mantle Cell Lymphoma,
- Marginal Zone Lymphoma,
- Nasal T-Cell Lymphoma,
- Pediatric Lymphoma,
- Peripheral T-Cell Lymphomas,
- Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma,
- T-Cell Leukemias,
- Transformed Lymphomas,
- Treatment-Related T-Cell Lymphomas, and
- Waldenström Macroglobulinemia
We will also consider Roundup users with multiple myeloma.
Minimum Usage of Monsanto Roundup
Obviously, we can’t bring a Roundup cancer lawsuit without proof of use of glyphosate. We emphasize the word “use” because the studies just aren’t there yet to say that exposure through contact with treated grass or crops is enough.
We have been contacted by a number of folks wondering if they may have contracted cancer from sitting on park lawns that were treated with Roundup. There is also a growing movement to sue because Roundup remains on treated crops. For example, when you eat a bowl of cereal, you are probably consuming glyphosate. It’s in our water, food and even our beer.
Before getting too alarmed, the amounts in food products is miniscule but what is a safe exposure level? That debate is ongoing today.
We also hear from people who live next to parks or next to farms and believe the spray is being carried on the wind.
Once again, we can’t say definitively that their cancer didn’t come from a bowl of Cheerios or the golf course or the farm down the road. But we also can’t prove that it did and in a Roundup cancer lawsuit, the burden of proof is on the person suffering from cancer.
What that means is that we require the person suffering from cancer to show:
- Use of Roundup (or other glyphosate products such as Ranger Pro), and
- 8 hours or more of exposure
For a homeowner, that means regular usage around the garden or property. Many of the current lawsuit plaintiffs are farm workers, landscapers, golf course greenskeepers, highway crews, ranchers (Roundup is widely used to keep weeds of electric fences) and nursery workers. Many of these people use Roundup on a daily or weekly basis and have hundreds of hours of exposure.
General Health and Age
There are no set rules here, let’s just say that a retired coal miner already suffering from several other forms of cancer as well as congestive heart failure, COPD and mesothelioma and who also happens to be 88 years of age is probably not the ideal Roundup cancer lawsuit plaintiff.
The defense lawyers from Monsanto can probably successfully argue that any of these other factors including age are more determinative to his or her current health.
There is no one determinative factor, rather we consider each case on its own merits.
Statute of Limitations and Dates of Exposure
The legislature in each state sets a time period for when lawsuits may be filed. Even if a state says that plaintiffs have just two years to file a lawsuit, many of these states recognize a “discovery rule” which says that the time period begins not to run when the person first used Roundup but when the person knew or should have known that there was a connection between the use of Roundup and his particular cancer.
And if those rules aren’t already confusing, many states set an absolute time limit on when a lawsuit can be filed.
Let’s look at two examples:
Sheila lives in Louisiana and regularly used Roundup on her small ranch for many years. Louisiana has a one-year statute of limitations for injury claims. Sheila is diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in July 2017. Can she file a lawsuit in August 2019?
The answer is maybe. If the court determines that she had no reason to know of the link between her use of Roundup and cancer until January of 2019, the discovery rule says the one-year time clock to file a lawsuit doesn’t begin until 2019.
Let’s change the scenario and say she regularly saw Roundup lawsuit commercials on TV beginning in March of 2018, the court may say that a reasonable person should not have waited 17 months to file.
Now one final example. John is a retired school groundskeeper in North Carolina. He regularly used Roundup until his retirement in 1999. He had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma back then which is why he retired. Luckily, his cancer has remained in remission. During his regular checkup with his oncologist, she tells him that his cancer may be linked to his use of Roundup. This is the first he heard of that.
North Carolina has a three-year period to file a lawsuit. Using the example above, John first heard of the link between Roundup and cancer in August 2019. The three-year clock would normally begin running then. North Carolina, however, has an absolute bar on lawsuits over 12 years. Under the law there, product injury claims can never be brought more than 12 years after the initial purchase or consumption. John doesn’t get to file.
We apologize if this appears to be a bit complex. The point is that there are many considerations when we screen new Roundup lawsuit cases. Some factors such as state laws are objective while others such as general health or age are more subjective.
Mahany Law – America’s Roundup Lawsuit Lawyers
If you or a loved one has non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and at last 8 hours of use of Roundup or other glyphosate products, you may be entitled to substantial damages. Our case review is free and without obligation. If we take your case, we never charge attorneys’ fees unless we win and you receive compensation. All inquiries are kept completely confidential.
For more information, contact us online, by email *protected email* or by phone at 414-704-6731 (direct).
**We remind you to visit our Monsanto Roundup cancer page and also our Roundup Resources Page.
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