Covington partner David Zionts was named one of the Litigators of the Week in AmLaw Litigation Daily for securing a long-sought victory for Bayer subsidiary Monsanto at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 7-2 decision, the Court held that state law claims alleging Monsanto failed to warn consumers about the cancer risks associated with its Roundup herbicide were preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the federal law governing the product's labeling. Bayer's stock price rose about 20% in the hours after the ruling, the company's biggest same-day gain in more than two decades.
Covington has been involved in the Roundup litigation since shortly after Bayer acquired Monsanto, with a significant portion of the firm's work focused on the key legal issues, especially preemption. After the team successfully created a circuit split with a Third Circuit victory, the case reached the Supreme Court.
As David explained, "When the Supreme Court denied review of the same issue in 2022, we didn't call it quits. We were confident that we had the better of the issue on the law, and so we planned and strategized to create opportunities for more courts to hear the issue and get it right. We also stepped back, took stock of the argument and really honed it into something clean and straightforward. We kept bringing it back to a basic strategic judgment that wound up prevailing: Congress wanted uniformity in labeling, it empowered an expert agency to make hard scientific decisions and deliver that uniformity, and it didn't want the agency's judgment being second-guessed state by state or jury by jury."
David added, "What I will remember most is the opportunity to collaborate with an unselfish group of partners, and to engage together in creative lawyering to solve a really important issue."
In addition to David, the Covington team representing Monsanto included Mike Imbroscio, Phyllis Jones, Paul Schmidt, and Matthew Quallen, whose deep dive into the history and evolution of FIFRA made it directly into the Supreme Court's opinion.
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