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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Bayer AG's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages, Reuters reported. The justices turned away a Bayer appeal and left in place a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers. The Supreme Court's action dealt a blow to Bayer as the company maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases. The justices have a second petition pending on a related issue that they could act upon in the coming weeks. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration in May urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, reversing the government's position previously taken under former President Donald Trump. Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each, while also winning four trials. Bayer had pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer said it "respectfully disagrees" with the court's decision and that the company is "fully prepared to manage the litigation risk associated with potential future claims in the U.S." On Friday, a federal appeals court ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a fresh look at whether the active ingredient glyphosate poses unreasonable risks to humans and the environment. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with several environmental, farm worker and food safety advocacy groups that the EPA did not adequately consider whether glyphosate causes cancer and threatens endangered species.

Hertz Corp. has offered to settle about three dozen cases filed by renters that say they were wrongly arrested for auto theft, the company said, Bloomberg News reported. The settlement push comes after Colleen Batcheler took over as general counsel for the rental company. During her first month on the job, Batcheler made it her top priority to end suits from more than 230 customers accusing Hertz of improperly calling in police on its renters, mostly while haggling about overdue rentals. “We’ve tried to take a step back and say ‘How can we make progress in a way that is fair to our customers and is based on individual facts and circumstances,’” Batcheler said in an interview. Hertz lost a key court battle earlier this month when a federal judge allowed more than 70 customers to sue for false arrests. Until then, Hertz had successfully forced nearly all of the lawsuits to remain under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Delaware. Batcheler declined to say how much money the company was offering to the alleged victims and their families.

A judge in Texas overseeing Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc.'s bankruptcy rejected a request by one of its creditors to arbitrate a contract dispute worth up to $770 million, saying that the proposed arbitration could derail the power cooperative's restructuring and harm consumers in rural Texas at a time when energy prices are already high, Reuters reported. At a Wednesday court hearing in Houston, attorneys for creditor Sandy Creek Energy Associates LP pushed for Brazos, the largest power cooperative in Texas, to arbitrate a contract dispute outside of bankruptcy court. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones sided with Brazos, saying that Sandy Creek's proposal could "drastically change the landscape" of the bankruptcy and ultimately harm other creditors, including rural power customers. "I do not buy the explanation at all that it's going to be quicker," Jones said. Brazos filed for bankruptcy after a historic winter storm in 2021 left millions of Texans without power and triggered a $2 billion fight between Brazos and the state’s electric grid operator. The deadly storm caused energy prices to spike several thousand percent and has caused several other energy companies to file for bankruptcy. Brazos is attempting to mediate its dispute with the Texas power grid operator before proposing a restructuring plan in court.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge said yesterday that he may allow some lawsuits that accuse Johnson & Johnson talc products of causing cancer to proceed while the company's subsidiary seeks a national settlement of the claims in bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan in Trenton, N.J., said that he would consider "two very different paths forward" for the bankruptcy at a July 6 hearing. The company wants the bankruptcy court to estimate the number and value of talc claims, while plaintiffs in the talc lawsuits have asked the court to allow some cases to resume outside of the bankruptcy court. J&J, which maintains that its Baby Powder and other talc products are safe, assigned its talc liabilities to a new subsidiary, LTL Management LLC, and placed it in bankruptcy in October, pausing 38,000 lawsuits that had been filed against J&J. The talc claimants have appealed Kaplan's decision to allow the bankruptcy case to block their lawsuits, and the two sides remain far apart in recent mediation. LTL attorney Greg Gordon of Jones Day said the bankruptcy court should estimate the overall value of talc claims to impose "discipline" on settlement talks. David Molton of Brown Rudnick, an attorney for the talc claimants , said that LTL's approach would cause the case to "malinger" and "fester," just like other bankruptcies involving asbestos claims. At least 300 cancer victims with claims against J&J have died since the LTL case was filed, Molton said.

Mallinckrodt plc on Monday announced that it expects to complete its reorganization process, emerge from chapter 11 and complete the Irish Examinership proceedings in the coming days, according to a press release. On the effective date of emergence, all of Mallinckrodt's existing ordinary shares will be canceled pursuant to the company's reorganization plan and the Irish scheme of arrangement. Mallinckrodt expects to issue at emergence 13,170,932 new ordinary shares to its guaranteed unsecured noteholders in accordance with the provisions of the plan and the scheme. In accordance with the plan, Mallinckrodt also expects to issue at emergence to the opioid claimants 3,290,675 warrants, with a strike price of $103.40, and to adopt at emergence a management incentive plan providing for the issuance to management, key employees and directors of the company of equity awards with respect to up to an aggregate of 1,829,068 shares. Mallinckrodt's new shares are anticipated to trade over-the-counter until such time as the Company relists on a national securities exchange.

A federal bankruptcy court judge again has extended the deadline for the Diocese of Norwich to submit a bankruptcy plan, so creditors, including 140 people who say they were sexually assaulted by priests, can meet with a mediator and resolve a number of contentious issues, The Day reported. Judge James Tancredi on Monday ordered that the Roman Catholic diocese's exclusive filing period for the plan be extended until Sept. 30. It was the fourth extension for the diocese. In April, Tancredi had extended the deadline to June 15, again to give the parties more time to negotiate an agreement. The diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy 11 months ago as it faced more than 60 lawsuits filed by men who say they were sexually assaulted as boys by Christian Brothers and other staff at the diocese-run Mount Saint John Academy, a school for troubled boys in Deep River, from 1990 to 2002. Since then 80 additional people, whose sexual assault allegations involved not only the school but diocesan churches, have filed claims in the bankruptcy case. In addition, various other creditors are seeking a portion of the diocese's assets.

Argentine energy company YPF SA and a trust for its former subsidiary Maxus Energy Corp. on Monday resumed their longstanding dispute over who should pay as much as $14 billion to clean up the contaminated Passaic River in New Jersey, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lawyers representing both parties argued before Judge Christopher Sontchi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., over whether parent company YPF can be shielded from the multibillion-dollar liability by putting its subsidiary in bankruptcy. YPF placed Maxus in bankruptcy in 2016, leaving it with the liability related to the contamination of the river. In 2018, the trust in charge of Maxus’s liquidation sued YPF for stripping away most of Maxus’s international assets. In 2019, the lawsuit was allowed to move forward by Judge Sontchi, who presided over Maxus’s 2016 bankruptcy case, after YPF asked for the case to be dismissed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that 100 or so other companies might share responsibility for polluting the Passaic with byproducts from the manufacture of paints, pesticides and other chemical products. On Monday, the trust in charge of liquidating the assets of Maxus argued that YPF had stripped valuable assets from the oil-and-gas subsidiary, leaving it with the gigantic bill to clean up the river.

States opposed to a proposed $3 million bonus for the CEO of bankrupt Purdue Pharma L.P. should “move on” and support a proposal to donate the funds to a nonprofit that helps opioid victims, unsecured creditors say, Bloomberg Law reported. The unsecured creditors' committee said in a filing yesterday that it’s “not pleased” that CEO Craig Landau remains in his position, nor does it support paying him the proposed bonus, as the opioid-maker wants. But the New York bankruptcy court has, in previous years, approved similar proposals by Purdue , the committee noted. And the current proposal allows parties to try to claw back payments made to Landau if it’s found that he knowingly participated in any criminal misconduct in connection to Purdue or other activities, it said. “While not a perfect solution, this provision balances the debtors’ desire to compensate their employees with concerns regarding such employees’ potential responsibility for the debtors’ role in the opioid crisis,” the committee said. No party has shown that Landau engaged in conduct that warrants disgorgement of the money, the committee said. Instead, it suggested the states join its request for Landau or Purdue to donate some or all of the bonus to a nonprofit that fights the opioid crisis.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took no action on Bayer AG's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages, Reuters reported. The case was not mentioned on a list issued by the court on Monday as it decided on whether to hear pending appeals, raising at least the possibility that the justices are considering hearing it. Bayer has asked the justices to take up its appeal of a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers. The Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the appeal is being closely watched as Bayer maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases. Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each. Bayer has pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer has won three trials, including one last week. Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to review the verdict in Hardeman's case, which was upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2021. Hardeman had regularly used Roundup for 26 years at his home in northern California before being diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Bayer has said it should not be penalized for marketing a product deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and on which the EPA would not allow a cancer warning to be printed.

A federal judge in Texas on Friday dismissed the bankruptcy protection case of Infowars and two other companies controlled by Alex Jones, the result of an agreement between lawyers for the conspiracy theorist and parents of some of the children slain in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Associated Press reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez approved the deal after a brief court hearing. The judge’s action allows the parents’ defamation lawsuits against Jones to continue in Texas and Connecticut, where trials are pending on how much he should pay families after judges in both states found Jones and his companies liable for damages. The families' lawsuits say they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers because of the hoax conspiracy. Jones, based in Austin, Texas, has since said he believes the shooting did occur. Relatives of eight of the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the massacre and an FBI agent who responded to the school in Newtown, Connecticut, are suing Jones and Free Speech Systems. Infowars, Prison Planet TV and IW Health consented to dismissing the bankruptcy case last week after the families agreed to drop the three companies from their defamation lawsuits. Those lawsuits will continue against Jones himself and his largest moneymaking company, Free Speech Systems.