Susan B. (00:06):
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Tort Talk Thursday, where I’m here with Joe Fantini to give us all the updates and insights on all things mass tort. Joe, thanks so much for taking time to connect with me.
Joe Fantini (00:16):
Thanks Susan for having me. Really excited to talk to you today about the latest developments and some of these really important mass torts we’re working on.
Susan B. (00:24):
Yeah. Speaking of new developments, why don’t we start off and tell us what is going on with Roundup, especially as it relates to the third circuit ruling?
Joe Fantini (00:32):
Yeah, huge ruling just came down in the Roundup litigation. As you know, Bayer’s been arguing for years that these claims were preempted. So basically they’re saying that the state law claims the failure to warn claims couldn’t move forward because they were unable to put warnings on there about the risk of cancer. Bearer basically spent a decade litigating this $11 billion, and the third circuit handed them a win last week when they found that these claims are preempted. So what that does is that creates a split between some circuit courts here and the third circuit and two other circuit courts who said the claims weren’t preempted and bear plans to get this up to the Supreme Court. So while we’re waiting on that, we have a trial starting this week here in Philadelphia where the third Circuit made that ruling. What happened was Bayer filed an emergency motion on Friday trying to get the trial stayed. The judge denied that and then also dismissed their motion for reconsideration on the summary judgment. So we’re moving forward with the trial here in Philadelphia this week. Bayer’s arguing that all evidence related to the failure to warrant claim needs to be excluded. This result is likely going to be appealed. But stay tuned. This litigation’s really kicking up right now,
Susan B. (01:45):
And I know that there, we’ve got some upcoming case management conferences, both for toxic baby food and AFFF. Will you kind of get us up to speed on both of those?
Joe Fantini (01:54):
Yeah, AFFF the litigations going forward, there’s about 9,000 cases. We have a really big case management coming up here in September where we’re hopefully going to get the trial schedule and some more information in those bellwether cases that have been selected. We’re really hoping to get a trial in the second quarter of 2025 to hopefully get some settlements going there in toxic baby food. We had this mass tort formed in April of this year. We’ve been moving forward at a pretty good clip, but unfortunately the defendants are objecting to pretty much all of our discovery requesting information about their testing and protocols. So at this hearing, we’re going to get some guidance on the court on what we can and what we can’t get during discovery. That’s really important because it’s going to shape our litigation here going forward and help our theories a lot.
Susan B. (02:41):
Well, Joe, thank you so much for taking time to connect with me. As always, this is very helpful and insightful, and we’ll see you this time next week.
Joe Fantini (02:50):
Thanks, Susan. Thanks for having me.
