Judge decries ‘Hail Mary’ effort to boot Paraquat cases from Philadelphia

A victory in the state’s appeals courts would help Chevron and Syngenta rid themselves of many of the claims in Pennsylvania and could help other companies facing thousands of out-of-state claims in Philadelphia’s Complex Litigation Center, which also has programs for the weedkiller Roundup, the heartburn medicine Zantac and Johnson & Johnson’s allegedly asbestos-containing Baby Powder.

But Pennsylvania’s appellate courts have a history of letting Americans from all over sue in the Keystone State, thanks to a “consent-by-registration” law that essentially requires companies to consent to being sued there if they do business there – even when the plaintiffs, the sites of their exposures and their medical treatments are all elsewhere.

“With the mass tort now well developed, with protocols in place, and the Court having issued countless pretrial and evidentiary rulings, Moving Defendants have attempted to gain leverage and (perhaps) reduce the settlement value of cases by seeking to have cases transferred out of Pennsylvania,” Roberts wrote.

“The threat of cases proceeding to a jury trial before a Philadelphia jury is clearly part of (or the entire) motivation. It is particularly unsavory that Moving Defendants are seeking to pull this lever now, at a progressed stage of the litigation, as a Hail Mary attempt to delay and/or avoid bringing these cases to resolution.”

State appellate courts have already rejected the idea that the consent-by-registration law violates the Dormant Commerce Clause, with the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to review those decisions. The law was affirmed by SCOTUS in 2023 in a decision known as Mallory.

The new appeal concerns the doctrine of interstate forum non conveniens and will decide if the plaintiffs should have filed in their home states. It is Philadelphia’s pro-plaintiff reputation that attracts lawyers to the city, as juries there sometimes welcome the chance to hammer corporate defendants. For example, a jury hearing claims Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma awarded $2.2 billion (later reduced), and another jury gave $725 million in a case against Exxon Mobil over alleged benzene exposure.

Juries in Pennsylvania gave out the third-most of any state in 2024 - $3.4 billion - said a study by Marathon Strategies. That group has concluded that the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ranks second among all state courts in the country in so-called “nuclear verdicts,” awarding nearly $9 billion from 2009-2022.

Two previous rulings could be key to Syngenta and Chevron’s appeal. In 2019, the Superior Court tossed the lawsuit of a South Carolina man who sued CSX and Consolidated Rail Corporation. His injuries occurred in New York.

The Superior Court found out-of-state plaintiffs are entitled to lesser deference regarding where they choose to sue if “the plaintiff’s residence and place of injury are located somewhere else.”

A 2024 decision from the same court said Crothall Healthcare’s Pennsylvania headquarters was not a strong enough reason to sue in the state when the medical equipment at the heart of the case was not designed, made, marketed or sold in Pennsylvania and the injuries occurred out-of-state.

Lawyers at The Miller Firm, Motley Rice and Wagstaff Law Firm are lead counsel for the plaintiffs.