Bayer Cropscience Faces Multi-million Payout To Rice Farmers

摘要

Rice growers whose seed stocks were contaminated with unauthorized transgenic material in 2006 have failed to gain class-action status in their lawsuit against Bayer CropScience, but the company could still end up paying out millions of dollars in damages if it loses the first of an estimated 1,200 cases.rnU.S. District Judge Catherine Perry in August denied a motion to certify the farmers' claims into a class-action suit, explaining that they varied too greatly to be lumped into a single case. However, she suggested that all the lawsuits would not have to be tried separately, as a few suits might be considered test cases.rnIf the facts are very similar, early verdicts might be applied to other cases by the court, leaving only the amount of damages for juries to decide, CarlrnTobias, a University of Richmond law professor who teaches tort and product-liability law told Bloomberg News, adding, "That ups the ante for the first few trials. It might push the pressure to settle."