What Was Bayer Thinking?

The company’s $63 billion purchase of Monsanto looks increasingly like an epic own goal.

- Caroline Winter and Tim Loh

In July 2018, a baby-faced lawyer named R. Brent Wisner seized the opportunity to ask his legal opponent a question that had been bugging him. Through a series of accidents, Wisner had found himself co-leading a monumental case against Bayer AG, the German chemicals giant that had recently acquired Monsanto for $63 billion. Two weeks into the heated courtroom battle, he felt fairly certain he was going to win big and inflict lasting damage on the company. So he wanted to know: Why on earth wasn’t Bayer settling?

Wisner’s client, a 46-year-old former school district groundskeeper from California who was dying of cancer, said his illness had been caused by spraying hundreds of gallons of Monsanto Co.’s weedkiller, Roundup. Wisner’s team had compiled hundreds of documents backing the claims and demonstrating that Monsanto may have acted in bad faith, cozying up to officials in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and undermining scientists who raised questions about the safety of the company’s prized herbicide.

When Wisner found himself alone in a courtroom with two of Bayer’s lawyers, he asked them, “What are you doing? Why are you trying this case?” To clarify the question, he added, “We’re going to win, and it’s going to make it much harder for you to settle cases in the future.”