Some of the biggest product liability fights in American legal history never really ended — they just moved into a slower, quieter phase of settlements, appeals, and payouts that’s still playing out years after the headlines faded. Here’s where three of the largest currently stand.
Roundup: the Supreme Court just reshaped the entire fight
For years, Bayer (which acquired Monsanto) has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller causes cancer and that the company failed to warn users. That litigation landscape changed significantly in June 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell that the federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts state-law failure-to-warn claims that would require a label different from the one the EPA has already approved. Law firms who track pesticide regulation have called it a case that reinforces EPA’s primary role in pesticide labeling decisions nationwide, and other firms have published detailed breakdowns of exactly which claims survive the ruling and which don’t. The upshot: cases already filed and settlements already reached aren’t undone, but the path for new failure-to-warn claims going forward just narrowed considerably in states whose laws would have required a stronger warning than the EPA-approved label.
Talcum powder: a bankruptcy strategy that courts kept rejecting
Johnson & Johnson has spent years trying to resolve tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging its talc-based baby powder caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, including an unusual strategy — spinning off a subsidiary and immediately filing that subsidiary for bankruptcy — that became known as the “Texas Two-Step.” The Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that approach, finding the subsidiary wasn’t in the kind of genuine financial distress bankruptcy law requires, in a ruling a business law review at the University of Chicago analyzed as a significant check on companies using bankruptcy to resolve mass tort liability outside the ordinary civil court system. With that bankruptcy path closed off, talc litigation has continued moving through ordinary jury trials and settlements in state and federal court instead.
Baby formula: a fast-moving, newer wave of litigation
The newest of the three is the litigation over specialty preterm infant formula and necrotizing enterocolitis, a serious intestinal disease affecting premature infants. In September 2026, Abbott agreed to pay $670 million to resolve roughly 2,000 cases consolidated in the federal NEC multidistrict litigation, a settlement reported in detail as it was announced. The underlying science remains genuinely disputed: a joint statement from the FDA, CDC, and NIH found that the evidence points to a lack of human milk, rather than the specialty formula itself, as the primary driver of NEC risk in preterm infants, a position formula manufacturers have leaned on in their defense even as they settle individual cases. The Congressional Research Service’s summary of the litigation is a useful neutral primer on how the scientific and legal questions diverge in this particular mass tort.
What connects all three
Each of these fights illustrates a different way mass tort litigation can turn on something other than a jury simply weighing the evidence: Roundup on the relationship between federal regulatory approval and state tort law, talc on whether a corporate restructuring can end litigation through bankruptcy court instead of trial, and baby formula on how settlements can proceed even while the underlying causation science stays contested. None of the three is “over” — new cases continue to be filed in all three, even as existing ones resolve.
What this means if you or a family member may have a claim
Because eligibility criteria, filing deadlines, and settlement program details differ significantly across all three of these litigations — and because the legal landscape for at least one of them just shifted meaningfully with the Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling — a claim’s viability genuinely depends on current, case-specific facts rather than what may have been true even a year ago.
This post is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Mass tort litigation status, settlement eligibility, and applicable law change frequently — consult a licensed attorney to evaluate a specific potential claim.
