Class Action Filed in Arkansas Added to Monsanto, BASF Dicamba Herbicide MDL

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A proposed class action filed back in June 2017 against Monsanto Company, BASF SE and BASF Corporation was in early February transferred into the still-growing multidistrict litigation (MDL) through which all federal lawsuits over the allegedly damaging effects of the defendants’ dicamba crop system will be handled. The MDL now contains 12 similar complaints.

The complaint featured below concerns the defendants’ control and development of the “dicamba crop system.” The plaintiffs allege dicamba, a herbicide, is responsible for significant damage to proposed class members’ crop systems as a result of the companies’ alleged negligence in controlling, developing and distributing the dicamba crop system, which the complaint alleges “inextricably links dicamba-resistant seeds with dicamba-based herbicides.”

The 29-page lawsuit traces its allegations back to Monsanto’s 2015 release of its Xtend line of products, which the company describes on its website as a “crop system” that, when combined with the dicamba-based herbicide VaporGrip, “identifies dicamba-resistant seeds (Xtend) and the dicamba-based herbicides (VaporGrip) that should be used in conjunction with one another. From the complaint:

The Xtend Crops are resistant to both glyphosate, the main active ingredient in … Monsanto’s most popular herbicide, Roundup, and dicamba. However, the rising tolerance to Roundup made dicamba a necessary herbicide for crop survival due to rising weed resistance.”

The problem, the plaintiffs argue, is that Monsanto allegedly sold the seeds in its Xtend system before the Environmental Protection Agency approved a safe dicamba-based herbicide, with federal approval for dicamba-based herbicides handed down “well after” the 2016 growing season completed.

“Farmers relied on [the defendants] to produce a safe and approved herbicide that would be sold on the market during the 2016 growing season,” the complaint reads. “However, the approval for dicamba-based herbicides did not occur until after the 2016 growing season.”

Without an approved dicamba-based herbicide to complete the Xtend Crop system, farmers who bought Xtend soybeans and cotton could either allow their livelihoods to be overrun with weed growth, or the lawsuit says, spray an obsolete dicamba product onto their crops. Monsanto and BASF, the lawsuit alleges, knew or should have known that releasing into the market dicamba-resistant seeds without an accompanying dicamba-based herbicide would damage farmers’ crops.