Third Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling in Monsanto’s favor in Schaffner v. Monsanto No. 22-3075 (3d Cir. August 15, 2024), unanimously finding that the state-based failure-to-warn claims in this case are expressly preempted by the FIFRA statute. This decision creates a circuit split with prior decisions of the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits on the central legal issues in the Roundup litigation and underscores the need for consistency on this important topic from a federal standpoint.
Here, David Schaffner, Jr. and Theresa Sue Schaffner filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Corporation, alleging that Monsanto violated Pennsylvania law by failing to include a cancer warning on the label of its weed-killer, Roundup. The Schaffners claimed that this omission caused Mr. Schaffner to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma due to his exposure to Roundup. The case was initially filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and was later removed to the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation (JPML) then transferred the case to the Northern District of California for consolidated pretrial proceedings. The Third Circuit held that plaintiff’s state-based warning claims are expressly preempted by FIFRA.
The Court held that FIFRA’s preemption provision, which prohibits states from imposing labeling requirements different from those required under federal law, did preempt the state-law duty to include a cancer warning. The court reasoned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had approved Roundup’s label without a cancer warning, and FIFRA regulations require pesticide labels to conform to the EPA-approved label. Therefore, the Pennsylvania duty to warn was not equivalent to the federal requirements and was preempted by FIFRA. The Third Circuit reversed the judgment of the District Court.
This decision on federal preemption creates a circuit split among the federal appellate courts and necessitates a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.