The Missouri judge overseeing Bayer AG's effort to resolve current and future Roundup lawsuits through a class-action case is known as a no-nonsense jurist who will closely scrutinize the proposed $7.25 billion settlement.
St. Louis Circuit Judge Tim Boyer, 48, has presided over several cases alleging the Roundup pesticide caused cancer -- including a $1.25 million jury award that the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear. Lawyers and retired jurists say he'll move quickly to weigh the accord's merits and won't waste time having to learn the case.
"He's the go-to guy for mass-tort cases in that court," said Rex Burlison, a retired judge who has known Boyer since he was appointed to the state circuit court in 2017. "He got the assignment because he's the best judge to handle this kind of case."
Officials of Leverkusen, Germany-based Bayer declined to comment on Boyer's assignment to the proposed Roundup class case. The judge also declined to comment.
Bayer is pushing the class action in hopes of finding a way out of the legal morass that accompanied the conglomerate's purchase of Roundup-maker Monsanto Inc. in 2018. Bayer has spent the last seven years battling, and sometimes settling, claims Roundup causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The company has already shelled out $10 billion resolving cases and has raised its litigation provisions to €11.8 billion ($13.9 billion) to fund its settlement offer tied to the class.
Bayer officials have steadfastly maintained Roundup is safe based on numerous studies. They also point to a decision by US regulators to not require the company to place cancer-warning labels on the weed killer.
The proposed accord, which offers payouts over a 21-year-period, would provide as much as $165,000 per person depending on the claimant's age, occupation and the severity of their cancer, according to a website set up to provide settlement information. Payouts for those with less-aggressive forms of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma would start at $6,000, the site shows.
Earlier Offer
Bayer needs to have better luck persuading Boyer to sign off on the class proposal than they did with a federal judge in San Francisco in 2021. US District Judge Vince Chhabria found the $8 billion proposal's provisions for resolving future claims was flawed by "glaring errors" in its framework.
Bayer argues this offer is different.
The new proposal has a longer run time, a larger funding pool and would allow people to opt out of the deal so they can pursue their injury claims in court. It's also a class based on Missouri state law, rather than federal class-action rulings. That's where Boyer comes in.
He must decide whether Bayer's proposal meets the legal tests to proceed as a class-action case and offers adequate compensation to former Roundup users currently suffering from cancer in addition to those fearful the deadly disease could affect them within the next two decades.
Boyer's handled class-action cases before, including one involving unhappy fans of the city's former Super Bowl winning National Football League team, the St. Louis Rams. In 2019, Boyer oversaw a class-action case by ticketholders who accused the Rams of misleading them about whether the team was moving to Los Angeles. The team - which went west in 2016 - agreed to pay $25 million to compensate disgruntled patrons.
Boyer also presided over John Durnell's Roundup trial in 2023, in which jurors awarded the avid gardener $1.25 million in damages for his cancer.
Bayer has appealed Durnell's verdict all the way to the nation's highest court on the issue of whether failure-to-warn claims, like those raised in Durnell's trial, are preempted by federal law because federal regulators haven't required Bayer to add cancer warnings to Roundup's label. The high court is set to hear arguments in the case April 27 and is expected to rule by June.
Boyer, a former prosecutor, has political ties that swing both ways. He was first appointed as an associate judge by then Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, in 2016. He was elevated to the full circuit bench a year later by former Governor Eric Greitens, a Republican.
Boyer was a practicing attorney from 2003 to 2007, when he was tapped to became a prosecutor, according to the court website. He prosecuted cases until his appointment to the bench in 2016.
"He's a sharp judge," said Roe Frazer, one of Durnell's trial lawyers. "He's not so doctrinaire that he couldn't think creatively about how to resolve cases."
Boyer won't be a pushover either for the company or the plaintiffs' lawyers backing the proposed deal, Frazer said. "I don't think approval of this class is a done deal in his mind," said the Nashville, Tennessee-based lawyer. "He'll aggressively question and probe this proposal."