Schmeiser, who farmed at Bruno, Sask., about 90 km east of Saskatoon, died Tuesday at age 89. According to Saskatchewan media, he had Parkinson’s disease, but the specific cause of his death was not released.

Without specifically mentioning his court fights, his obituary in Saskatchewan newspapers notes he “became an advocate for farmers’ rights” in the 1990s.

That entry into activism and worldwide notoriety came after the discovery of Roundup Ready genetics across 1,000 acres he seeded to canola in 1998, despite Schmeiser never having obtained the license required by Monsanto for use of the company’s glyphosate-tolerant genetics.

Tests of Schmeiser’s canola found between 95 and 98 per cent of it to be Roundup Ready. Thus Monsanto — which has since been taken over by Bayer — took Schmeiser to court for patent infringement.

That case ended in a 2001 ruling against Schmeiser, in which the suggestion that the 1998 crop was the product of seed blown or inadvertently carried onto the fields was rejected. The trial court found he “knew or ought to have known” he was seeding a crop with patented genetics and that the resulting crop he sold contained those same genetics.

The Federal Court of Appeal in 2003 and the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004 upheld that ruling in Monsanto’s favour. The top court, in its ruling, upheld Monsanto’s patent on the genetics and found Schmeiser had “deprived (Monsanto) of the full enjoyment of the monopoly” its patent provided.

But the top court also found that Monsanto, in seeking an account of Schmeiser’s profits, was “only entitled to that portion of the infringer’s profit which is causally attributable to the invention.”

His profits, the court ruled, were only “precisely what they would have been had (Schmeiser) planted and harvested ordinary canola.” In short, Monsanto was “entitled to nothing” on its claim of account.

Left on the hook for his own costs from that court fight, Schmeiser’s lone legal win against Monsanto came in a separate case he brought against the company in 2005 in small claims court in Saskatoon.

In that later case, he sought payment for the costs of clearing volunteer Roundup Ready canola that grew on a chem-fallow field that year. Monsanto settled in 2008, paying $660.

Schmeiser and his court fights nevertheless became a cause celebre among various activist organizations worldwide. Among other accolades, he was presented in 2007 with a Right Livelihood Award, an award often dubbed the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”

Ole von Uexkull, executive director of the Sweden-based Right Livelihood Foundation, said in a statement Thursday that Schmeiser “will be remembered by farmers around the world for standing up against a bully and shining a spotlight on the dangers of genetically engineered crops.”

The foundation on Thursday described his case as “one of the first and most prominent cases involving a company claiming to own patents on life. It revealed how traditional seed economics and treatment are currently giving way to a dependency on only a few big multinational enterprises.”

The court fights became the basis for a 2016 stage production, Seeds, in which Schmeiser was played by Canadian actor Eric Peterson, and for a separate major film, Percy, filmed mainly in Manitoba and released last month with U.S. actor Christopher Walken as Schmeiser.

Born and raised at Bruno, Schmeiser studied in Toronto before returning to the family’s farm and ag implement dealership. He also served for years as a mayor and town councillor in Bruno, and as the provincial MLA for Watrous from 1967 to 1971 in Ross Thatcher’s Liberal government.

Schmeiser is survived by wife Louise, five children, 15 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. A funeral mass is to be held privately Saturday in Bruno, but a livestream is scheduled for 2 p.m. MT.

Donations in Schmeiser’s memory can be made to the Humboldt District Hospital Foundation, designated for palliative care, or to the Bruno Senior Citizens Friendship Centre. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The German company said that lawyers representing those preparing a class action had withdrawn a request for court approval of the $1.25 billion future claims scheme, part of a broader $10.9 billion agreement to settle close to 100,000 U.S. lawsuits related to Roundup (all figures US$).

The move would give both sides more time to address questions raised by Federal District Court Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California, who presides over the federal Roundup litigation, Bayer said.

Chhabria had raised concerns over Bayer’s plan to create an independent panel of scientific experts to help assess whether glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup caused cancer.

“Bayer remains strongly committed to a resolution that simultaneously addresses both the current litigation on reasonable terms and a viable solution to manage and resolve potential future litigation,” the company statement said.

Bayer said the wider agreement to settle current claims at a cost of up to $9.6 billion was not affected by Wednesday’s decision, which only impacted the agreement on future claims.

It declined to comment on the impact on the timetable for the bulk of the settlement.

“The (withdrawal) decision means that Bayer is back to square one when it comes to managing future claims, which will be worked up and filed over the coming years,” said David Noll, a law professor at Rutgers University who closely follows the litigation.

Elizabeth Cabraser, a lawyer representing the lead plaintiffs in the negotiations, said attorneys remained strongly committed to a fair and just resolution for all cases not yet included in the wider settlement.

Bayer is seeking to end legal disputes it inherited with its $63 billion takeover of Monsanto in 2018.

The agreement announced last month would apply only to U.S.-based cases, Bayer said at the time, and the company is “not contemplating” a settlement of similar Canadian cases related to glyphosate.

Court snag

On Tuesday, Bayer shares had fallen more than six per cent after Chhabria said that the court was inclined to oppose the part of the proposed settlement that deals with future claims. The case was due to be considered again on July 24. The shares slipped 0.7 per cent on Wednesday.

The company on Wednesday declined to say whether it would continue pursuing the idea of an outside scientific panel and said it would make adjustments to its existing plan to address Chhabria’s questions.

The San Francisco-based federal judge, in a filing on Monday, had questioned the idea of delegating the decision from judges and juries to a panel of scientists.

Chhabria also questioned whether potential claimants would want to remain bound by a ruling reached by the proposed scientific panel if research is still ongoing.

Regulators including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Chemicals Agency, have determined glyphosate to be non-carcinogenic, supporting Bayer’s claim that the active ingredient in its Roundup product is safe for agricultural use.

However, in 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm determined the herbicide to be a “probable carcinogen,” and since 2018, three consecutive U.S. juries, who listened to scientific evidence from both sides during trials, found that Roundup causes cancer.

— Reporting for Reuters by Patricia Weiss and Tina Bellon; additional reporting by Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt.

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In a series of court orders issued Tuesday, Federal Court Justice Denis Gascon said he was satisfied that Canada’s Competition Bureau was conducting an antitrust probe and that the named companies — which include Bayer, Corteva and BASF — would have or were likely to have information relevant to the inquiry.

Farm supply wholesalers, including Cargill, Univar Solutions and Federated Co-operatives, have also been ordered to produce records. The companies have 60-90 calendar days to comply, depending on the specific order.

The Competition Bureau said on Wednesday it had obtained the court orders in order to advance its investigation into allegations a number of manufacturers and wholesalers of seed and crop products had refused or restricted supply to FBN.

The Canadian regulator said in a release it was also “investigating whether some of these entities may have engaged in coordinated behavior against FBN,” and added there was “no conclusion of wrongdoing at this time.”

California-based FBN said in a statement: “We believe competition and price transparency is fundamental to a market economy, and to lowering farm expenses, so we are pleased that the Bureau is looking into this matter.

BASF, Corteva, Bayer and Cargill said last Thursday they would co-operate with the Competition Bureau’s investigation, which was launched following a complaint from FBN.

The Competition Bureau had told the court in Jan. 30 filings that it was seeking records and communications from the seed, pesticide and wholesaling companies over allegations that its stopped supplying FBN’s newly acquired Canadian business in 2018.

The alleged conduct by the agriculture companies under inquiry, the regulator told the court, may also impede or delay FBN’s successful expansion into the Canadian marketplace and/or cause the company to exit altogether.

Founded in 2014, FBN is developing an online marketplace for farmers to order crop inputs like pesticides, seed and other agricultural supplies.

The Competition Bureau said Wednesday the company’s online platform also included a pricing comparison tool that allows farmers to receive aggregated information on what other farmers are paying for agricultural products.

FBN, which has been selling crop inputs through its e-commerce platform in the United States since 2016, entered Canada in November 2017.

— Kelsey Johnson is a Reuters economics reporter in Ottawa.

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In a Monday filing seeking to end the proposed nationwide class action, Ben + Jerry’s said James Ehlers did not plausibly allege why its statements about using cows from Vermont dairies in its “Caring Dairy” program mattered to reasonable consumers.

Ben + Jerry’s also said Ehlers lacked standing to seek future relief because he now knows where its milk and cream come from, and because it has removed “happy cows” from packaging, leaving cartoon cows with “no discernible expression” on the labels.

“They did not look happy to begin with,” Ben + Jerry’s said, joined by its parent Unilever.

Jay Shooster, a lawyer for Ehlers, declined to comment.

In his Oct. 29 complaint filed with the federal court in Burlington, Vermont, Ehlers said that more than half the milk and cream used in Ben + Jerry’s ice cream actually came from “factory-style, mass-production” dairy operations.

He said misleading marketing enabled Ben + Jerry’s to charge premium prices, and violated a Vermont consumer protection law.

Ben + Jerry’s countered that “happy cows” was merely a statement of opinion, known as “puffery,” and could not support the lawsuit.

“Happiness cannot be measured objectively, and Ehlers could not take a cow’s deposition to ask how it feels,” it said.

Founded in 1978 in a renovated gas station, Ben + Jerry’s has long positioned itself as socially conscious. Unilever bought the company in August 2000.

Ehlers lost in the Democratic primary to become Vermont’s governor in 2018.

— Jonathan Stempel is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. federal and state courts and consumer law from New York.

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The Teamsters union argued in court filings that Canadian Pacific Railway should face contempt fines of $50,000 a day for making its conductors and locomotive engineers stay late, despite an arbitrator’s decision that ends duty after their shifts.

The case, which has been filed in Federal Court in Toronto, is expected to go to court in 2020, said sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the dispute is still wading its way through the legal system. No date has been set.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Calgary-based CP denied that it failed to comply with the arbitrator’s 2018 order, adding it is “vigorously defending” its claim and believes the case should be resolved outside of court.

Workers’ shifts and fatigue emerged as key issues in November during a crippling, eight-day strike at Canadian National Railway, which ended with an agreement-in-principle set to be finalized in late January.

A recording of an exhausted CN conductor facing pressure to move a freight train following his 10-hour shift helped spur a breakthrough in the negotiations.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau is reviewing rail industry proposals submitted this week to introduce new work-rest rules for railway employees, as part of broader efforts by North American regulators to fight fatigue.

CP said in the emailed statement that the parties are currently “working to resolve a host of procedural issues” in the case.

Mixing arbitration and the courts is a departure from the normal practice of separating the two fields, following a 1995 Supreme Court of Canada decision on the matter, a human resources expert said.

“It would be very uncommon,” said Rafael Gomez, director of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.

CP argued Federal Court is the wrong forum to hear “complex operational issues” such as the ones in the case.

The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) union and Canada’s large railways have clashed for years over working hours in the 24-hour, mostly on-call industry serving far-flung locations, where delays are common because of bad weather and congestion.

“These issues can and should be dealt with through the processes already provided for under the collective agreement between the parties,” CP said.

The TCRC, which declined comment, argued in the June 2019 filing that CP left it no other choice but to go to court.

“The union has now been forced to seek this contempt motion because the violations continue to occur hundreds of times every month,” said the TCRC, which represents thousands of Canadian rail workers.

The union said it identified 6,215 violations of workers’ rest provisions between the publication of the arbitrator’s order on March 23, 2018, and Dec. 19, 2018.

CP’s unionized locomotive engineers and conductors can book rest within 10 hours if they give proper notice, and can be off duty within 12 hours, barring extenuated circumstances outside the railway’s control, such as bad weather.

Rail workers in Canada and the U.S. can work a maximum of 12 hours, according to regulations in each country.

While arbitrator Graham Clark did not side fully with the union or CP, his March 2018 decision issued a cease and desist order after “CP’s own evidence indicated that thousands of situations continue to occur annually where employees are not off within 10 hours.”

Most of the workers were kept less than an hour late.

“The health and safety of the union’s members (and the public), maximum hours of work and their right to book rest if they are fatigued, is of paramount concern,” the union said in the 2019 filing.

— Reporting for Reuters by Allison Lampert in Montreal and Anna Mehler-Paperny in Toronto; additional reporting by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa.

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U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria during a hearing in San Francisco federal court called his decision “probably most disappointing for Monsanto,” the Bayer unit that manufactures the world’s most widely used herbicide.

The company denies allegations that glyphosate causes cancer and says decades of independent studies have shown the chemical to be safe for human use.

Chhabria on Monday said plaintiffs could introduce some evidence of Monsanto’s alleged attempts to ghostwrite studies and influence the findings of scientists and regulators during the first phase of upcoming trials. He said documents which showed the company taking a position on the science or a study introduced during the first phase were “super relevant.”

The company had hoped the judge would take a harder line on such evidence following a Jan. 3 order by Chhabria restricting evidence of corporate misconduct. At the time, that decision lifted Bayer’s shares nearly seven per cent.

Monsanto had argued much of this evidence was a “sideshow” that would only distract jurors from the scientific evidence.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers contended some evidence of corporate misconduct was inextricably linked to their scientific claims.

The judge appeared to agree with them, saying it was difficult to draw the line between scientific evidence and allegations of corporate misconduct, and questioned whether it would be fair for the jury to not hear about the company’s alleged attempts to influence scientists.

The parties did agree that other internal documents, including emails of Monsanto employees discussing lobbying efforts, do not belong in the initial trial phase.

Under Chhabria’s order, that evidence would be allowed only if glyphosate was found to have caused plaintiff Edwin Hardeman’s cancer and the trial proceeded to a second phase to determine Bayer’s liability.

The order applies to Hardeman’s case, which is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 25, and two other upcoming cases. There are some 620 Roundup cases before Chhabria, out of more than 9,300 nationwide.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers believe corporate misconduct evidence was critical to a California state court jury’s August decision to award US$289 million in a similar case. The verdict sent Bayer shares tumbling at the time, though the award was later reduced to US$78 million and is under appeal.

— Tina Bellon reports on product liability law for Reuters in New York.

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The deal covers U.S. corn producers, grain handling facilities and ethanol plants nationwide that sold corn priced after Sept. 15, 2013, according to a filing in Kansas federal court. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a statement that they believed the deal to be the largest agricultural class action settlement in U.S. history.

“We are very pleased with this outcome,” they said.

Cargill is still pursuing separate claims against Syngenta and is not part of the settlement. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) announced it reached a separate settlement with Syngenta in February.

Syngenta, now owned by Chinese chemical company ChemChina, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The settlement was first reported in September, but its details were not made public until Monday’s filing.

The farmers’ class action lawsuit, which was certified in 2016, concerns Syngenta’s 2010 decision to sell a strain of insect-resistant GMO corn called Agrisure Viptera in the U.S.

Lawyers for the corn farmers said Syngenta negligently commercialized the seeds before obtaining import approval from China, then a major buyer of U.S. corn.

Chinese authorities ultimately rejected millions of tonnes of the U.S. corn imports before the country later approved Viptera for import in December 2014.

More than 90 per cent of corn grown in the U.S., the world’s top supplier, is genetically engineered, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The loss of the Chinese market caused U.S. corn prices to plummet, the farmers’ lawyers said.

Syngenta denied wrongdoing. It said at the time that no company had ever delayed launching a U.S.-approved corn product in the U.S. just because China had yet to approve its import.

It also said the decline in sales to China was offset by exports to other countries.

In addition to the nationwide class of farmers, several state classes were certified. One of those went to trial, resulting in a US$217.7 million for more than 7,000 Kansas farmers in June.

— Reporting for Reuters by Brendan Pierson in New York.

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A federal court in Mexico City rejected the suit by PHI Mexico, a unit of U.S. chemical maker DowDuPont’s company Pioneer, because it found it was not authorized to rule on the matter, said the lawyer, Rene Sanchez.

“So it leaves things as they are until the (Supreme) court decides whether to study it or rule on it,” Sanchez said.

Mexico currently permits cultivation of genetically-modified corn for scientific ends in areas of up to one hectare (2.5 acres) and non-commercial pilot schemes in areas of up to 10 hectares under judicial supervision. Commercial cultivation is prohibited.

The curbs on transgenic corn are part of a suit brought in 2013 by a group known as the Colectividad del Maiz composed of farmers, scientists, environmentalists and others.

The court could not immediately be reached for comment. In such cases, the rulings are typically not public and the findings only made known to the affected parties.

— Reporting for Reuters by Adriana Barrera.

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In a statement on Thursday, JBS said it had learned that Brazil’s Regional Federal Court of the 1st Region overturned a ruling blocking the US$300 million sale of a South American unit to rival Minerva SA. Newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported the news earlier in the day.

The regional court also removed any lingering restrictions on JBS to negotiate sales of any assets or operations. On June 21, federal Judge Ricardo Leite had blocked JBS’s sale of plants in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, saying it could harm a probe against the billionaire Batista family.

Efforts to obtain the ruling from the court’s media office were not immediately successful.

With permission to sell assets, JBS has gained flexibility to downsize amid talks to restructure 18 billion reais (C$7.1 billion) in looming loan maturities, which Reuters reported last month. Asset sales could make up for smaller access to credit from state lenders after the scandal involving brothers Wesley and Joesley Batista.

Cheap state loans helped fuel growth over the past decade at J+F Investimentos SA, the Batistas’ holding company, which was able to keep control of JBS while expanding into fashion, pulpmaking and banking. Through takeovers, JBS grew from a mid-sized slaughterhouse in Brazil’s Midwest into the world’s No. 2 food processor in that time.

Record leniency

Wesley Batista, the older brother, is chief executive officer of Sao Paulo-based JBS. State development bank BNDES, whose investment arm is JBS’s No. 2 shareholder, is demanding his removal.

In May, Prosecutor-General Rodigo Janot reached a plea deal with both brothers, who agreed to turn in 1,893 politicians they bribed.

Leite sits on the court that will also review a separate leniency deal that the Batistas reached with prosecutors over their participation in a bribery and graft scheme. The agreement requires the family to pay a record 10.3 billion-real (C$4.1 billion) fine over 25 years.

The Batistas have been selling assets to help raise cash to reduce a heavy debt load and pay the fine.

J+F sold control of the globally popular Havaianas flip-flop brand maker Alpargatas SA to the investment firms of Brazil’s most prominent banking families for 3.5 billion reais late on Wednesday.

— Reporting for Reuters by Guillermo Parra-Bernal.

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The government had been given six months to comply with a federal court ruling that struck down the previous administration’s ban on medical patients growing cannabis.

Health Canada said medical marijuana patients would also continue to have the option of buying cannabis from one of 34 producers licensed by the federal government.

But it reiterated that storefronts selling marijuana, commonly known as dispensaries or compassion clubs, are not authorized to sell cannabis for medical or any other purposes.

“These operations are illegally supplied, and provide products that are unregulated and may be unsafe. Illegal storefront distribution and sale of cannabis in Canada are subject to law enforcement action,” Health Canada said in a statement.

Canada’s former Conservative government overhauled the country’s medical marijuana program in 2013, requiring patients buy cannabis from licensed producers through a mail order system.

A federal court judge in Vancouver ruled in February that the restrictions imposed by the Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations were arbitrary.

The changes to the medical program came as Canada and the U.S. are looking at how to deal with the push to legalize marijuana for medical or recreational uses.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on a promise to legalize recreational marijuana and the government has said it would introduce legislation by the spring of 2017.

Twenty-five U.S. states have sanctioned some forms of marijuana use for medical purposes, while four allow recreational use. Nine other states have recreational or medical marijuana proposals headed for their ballots in the November election.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration earlier on Thursday denied requests to loosen the classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medical use.

Shares of Canadian medical marijuana producers edged lower after the announcement. Canopy Growth was down 11 cents at $4.04, while Mettrum Health fell 15 cents to $2.75.

— Reporting for Reuters by Leah Schnurr in Ottawa.

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