While Iowa farmers prepare for the planting season, the state legislature is considering a bill that would limit civil liability for chemical companies that manufacture pesticides. The bill recently passed the Senate while a similar version in the Iowa House has been unable to move out of several committees.
This pesticide bill is a tort bill; tort is an action or omission that causes harm to persons or property and are civil court claims, as opposed to criminal claims. The bill would add a new section to Code Chapter 668; Liability in Tort and specifically the section .12; Liability for products – defenses.
One way to read a legislative bill is to first review the layman’s explanation at the end. This is helpful before reading the bill’s statutory language which is usually more difficult to understand. In this pesticide bill, HSB737/SF2412, the explanation begins with its purpose, “The bill provides for a defense from civil liability associated with the use of pesticides that are registered with the EPA acting under the federal Act.” The next natural question is, how will the bill provide for this defense? It follows, “The bill provides that a label provides sufficient warning if it complies with any one of three criteria: (1) it was approved by the EPA, (2) it is consistent with the most recent human health assessment performed under the federal Act, or (3) it is consistent with the EPA’s carcinogenicity classification for the pesticide. In each case, the label is sufficient to satisfy any requirements for a warning regarding health or safety under the state Act, and any other provision of state law or any other common law duty to warn.”
Simply put, if a label on a pesticide product satisfies any one of these three criteria, the manufacture will not have any additional obligation under state law to provide further health or safety warnings, including the duty to warn of other foreseeable dangers. The duty to warn is one of the several causes of action frequently used in product liability cases where manufacturers are held liable for failing to warn users about the foreseeable dangers of their products. Other similar causes of action in product liability cases include design defects, breach of implied warranty, and negligence.
Last session, the Iowa legislature passed medical malpractice tort reform and the trucker tort bill. Both bills placed a cap on company liability for non-economic damages. Respecting the spirit of transparency, I would like to share that I did not support, or vote for, either bill. Similar to these previous tort bills, supporters of the pesticide bill in the Senate have recently stated that this tort bill is necessary because it will protect the agricultural industry in Iowa and prevent frivolous lawsuits. Bayer, the chemical company that produces Roundup, argues that pesticide makers should not be held liable for failing to alert people of foreseeable health risks as long as their products have a federally approved label. Lobbyists for Bayer, the company that owns Monsanto in Muscatine, Iowa, testified in a House subcommittee that because the EPA found Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, “not likely to be carcinogenic,” it would be illegal for them to include a cancer warning on the Roundup label. Others have noted that juries and judges across the US have ordered Bayer to pay billions to consumers diagnosed with non-Hodgen’s lymphoma and other cancers on the basis that Bayer failed to warn them of the dangers of Roundup.
Those that do not support this bill argue that, at the very least, it disincentivizes pesticide manufacturing companies from publicly disclosing additional dangers from use of their products because the EPA label would be sufficient to meet all warning criteria. Stronger arguments state that it would provide chemical companies immunity from liability for the harm their products cause. This leads one to question, what is the responsibility of the manufacturer to disclose dangers they are aware of even if the government, the EPA in this case, says the government label is sufficient to warn.
The final status of this bill has yet to be determined pending its upcoming movement in the Iowa House. Please send your comments and questions to your Senator and House Representative. Contact them at www.legis.iowa.gov.
