The first U.S. trial over the dicamba herbicide has landed Bayer AG and its German rival, BASF SE, with another potentially multi-billion-dollar problem.
Jurors in federal court in Cape Girardeau awarded $265 million Saturday to a Missouri farmer who blamed the companies' herbicide for destroying his peach orchards. They now face more than 140 lawsuits over allegations that dicamba wreaked havoc across the Midwestern U.S. when it drifted onto crops that weren't engineered to resist it.
While two German industrial giants are involved, the focus is set to fall on Bayer, already seeking to settle thousands of lawsuits claiming exposure to its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer. Both dicamba and Roundup are produced by Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018.