Bayer won the first trial involving Roundup claims after a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling narrowed the legal arguments available to plaintiffs. A St. Louis jury unanimously ruled for Bayer-owned Monsanto on claims by Theresa Aretino, Cynthia Fernandez and Betty Larkin that regular Roundup use caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The women sued in 2020, alleging that the herbicide was defectively designed, unreasonably dangerous and negligently sold; Fernandez died before the trial began, and none of the three is participating in Bayer’s proposed settlement. Bayer is separately seeking approval of a $7.25 billion settlement covering other Roundup cases, with the proposal under review by a Missouri state court judge in St. Louis. Bayer shares rose 4% to a one-month high after the verdict. The litigation has followed Bayer since its 2018 acquisition of Monsanto, costing the company billions of dollars and weighing on its share price. Bayer faces about 65,000 claims in U.S. state and federal courts. The Supreme Court ruled in June that federal law requires herbicide makers to use the exact label approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, blocking claims that Roundup’s label should have carried a cancer warning. Bayer said the ruling also forecloses other claims, while plaintiffs’ lawyers dispute that interpretation. The EPA has said the label does not require a cancer warning and previously concluded that glyphosate was probably not carcinogenic, although it is conducting a new safety review. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans in 2015, a conclusion Bayer has called an outlier based on flawed methodology.