Paraquat Settlement Opt-Outs Top 900 as MDL 3004 Judge Weighs a Return to Bellwether Trials

Paraquat settlement opt-outs have passed 900: Parkinson's disease plaintiffs in In re: Paraquat Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3004 in the Southern District of Illinois, have turned down individual offers under the global deal Syngenta and Chevron signed in 2025, with three plaintiffs' firms reporting refusal rates between 80 and 100 percent. As reported on 2 October 2026, the holdout bloc is now large enough that Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel may revive the bellwether trial program she shelved for settlement, putting the first contested paraquat verdicts back on the calendar for a litigation that has never reached a jury.

The number matters because of what it is measured against. The settlement was built to cover claims brought by roughly 8,488 people, and the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation's 1 October 2026 report lists 6,602 actions still pending in the federal MDL. A holdout group of 900-plus, concentrated in a handful of firms, is not the scattered tail of refusals every Global Settlement expects. It is an organized bloc with its own counsel, its own trial plans, and, in Philadelphia, a parallel state-court venue. How the court has responded since June, and what happens next, is the most closely watched opt-out fight in mass torts this year.

What happened: 900-plus paraquat settlement opt-outs

Two reports in the past ten days put a number on what the docket had been signaling since spring. SWI swissinfo.ch, the Swiss public broadcaster's international service, reported in late September that more than 900 plaintiffs had rejected Syngenta's offers and that at least three law firms reported refusal rates of 80 percent or higher. AboutLawsuits.com followed on 2 October 2026, reporting that hundreds of claimants had rejected the tentative settlement and that, if the agreement falls through, Judge Rosenstengel is likely to return to a series of bellwether trials.

The defendants are Syngenta Crop Protection, LLC, its Swiss parent Syngenta AG, and Chevron U.S.A. Inc., which formerly distributed paraquat in the United States. Syngenta's branded paraquat product is Gramoxone. Plaintiffs, overwhelmingly farmers, farmworkers, and commercial applicators, allege that chronic exposure to the herbicide caused their Parkinson's disease and that the companies knew of the neurological risk and failed to warn. Syngenta has consistently denied that paraquat causes Parkinson's disease and said when the deal was announced that settling does not imply otherwise.

The paraquat settlement opt-outs did not appear overnight. The court has been tracking them since at least April 2026, when Case Management Order No. 24 directed the plaintiffs' settlement administrators to hand Special Master Randi Ellis the names of claimants who did not qualify, the reasons they did not qualify, and the names and firms of eligible claimants who had opted out or signaled they would. By June, the court had enough data to single out firms by name.

How many plaintiffs opted out of the paraquat settlement?

More than 900 plaintiffs had rejected their paraquat settlement offers by late September 2026, according to swissinfo.ch, and the court's own orders identify where the refusals are concentrated. Three firms account for the headline rates:

Firm	Eligible clients who rejected	Source
DiCello Levitt LLP (Chicago)	100 percent	Order of 2 June 2026
The Smith Law Firm, PLLC (Mississippi)	More than 90 percent	Order of 2 June 2026
Nachawati Law Group	183 of 217 eligible clients (more than 80 percent)	Order of 3 June 2026
All firms combined	More than 900 plaintiffs	swissinfo.ch, late September 2026

Two features of the table deserve attention. First, the percentages are of eligible clients, meaning plaintiffs whose claims had already cleared the settlement's qualification criteria and received an offer. These are not rejected claims; they are offers the plaintiffs declined. Second, the concentration is the point. A program in which refusals are spread thinly across hundreds of firms suggests individual dissatisfaction with offer values. A program in which three firms post rates between 80 and 100 percent suggests something firm-level: a litigation strategy, a view of the claims' value, or, as the court has asked, a breakdown in how offers were explained.

The court has not published an overall participation rate, and the Master Settlement Agreement's terms, including any minimum-participation or walk-away provision, have not been made public. That gap is significant. In most modern mass tort deals, the defendant's obligation to fund turns on a participation threshold. Without the paraquat agreement's terms, nobody outside the parties can say whether 900 holdouts threaten the deal itself or merely leave a residual docket to be tried.

Why are plaintiffs rejecting the paraquat settlement?

Plaintiffs are rejecting the paraquat settlement because, on the available evidence, their lawyers believe the individual offers are worth less than the claims would be at trial, while the court has openly questioned whether some holdouts understood their offers or had their claims properly vetted. Neither the firms nor the defendants have explained the refusals publicly; swissinfo.ch reported that none of the three firms responded to requests for comment.

Several factors plausibly push in the holdouts' favor. The scientific and regulatory picture has shifted since the deal was struck in principle in April 2025. Syngenta announced on 3 March 2026 that it would stop producing Gramoxone globally by 30 June 2026 and stop selling it once stock ran out or by 31 December 2026, whichever came first. The company attributed the decision to competition from cheaper generic versions and said paraquat represented less than 1 percent of its worldwide revenue, but plaintiffs' counsel can be expected to argue the exit to juries in any event. In August 2026, California's Department of Pesticide Regulation announced that every registrant of paraquat products had voluntarily cancelled its California registration, the last one on 6 August, after the department demanded additional health and environmental data rather than accepting existing studies.

The defense, meanwhile, retains its strongest card. In April 2024 the MDL court excluded the plaintiffs' only general-causation expert and dismissed the first four bellwether cases, an order now on appeal but frozen (see below). For a holdout, that ruling is the central risk: if the Seventh Circuit affirms, a plaintiff without a new admissible general-causation expert has no case to try. For a firm that has invested in a replacement expert record, or that expects reversal, the calculus is different, and a 100 percent refusal rate is consistent with a firm-wide judgment that its inventory is worth more than the matrix offers.

The court's orders frame a second explanation. At the 27 August 2026 hearing with DiCello Levitt, Judge Rosenstengel raised "serious concerns" about whether some plaintiffs had been properly informed about the settlement and whether their claims had been adequately vetted for confirmed paraquat exposure and a Parkinson's diagnosis. That concern goes to Claimant Vetting rather than claim value: a firm that signed clients in volume without confirming exposure or diagnosis might have clients who cannot qualify, or who would lose at trial, yet still decline offers on counsel's advice.

How the court has handled paraquat settlement opt-outs

The court's response has been unusually hands-on. In most MDLs, an opt-out simply returns to the litigation track and the court's attention moves to the participating claims. Judge Rosenstengel instead built a supervised process for the holdouts, step by step:

Date	Order or event	What it did
14 April 2025	Court filing	Disclosed a signed letter agreement between Syngenta, Chevron and plaintiffs' lead counsel
April 2025	Seventh Circuit	Parties jointly asked the court of appeals to hold the Daubert appeal in abeyance
3 September 2025	Master Settlement Agreement	Co-lead counsel and defendants executed the MSA for certain individual claims
March 2026	Qualified Settlement Fund	Parties moved on 3 March to create a Qualified Settlement Fund (QSF); the court approved it that month
8 April 2026	Case Management Order No. 24	Settlement administrators to give Special Master Ellis non-qualifier lists (with reasons) and opt-out lists by 20 April
2 June 2026	Order on Smith and DiCello opt-outs	Random ~10 percent sample of each firm's opt-outs sent to limited discovery
3 June 2026	Order on Nachawati opt-outs	Same procedure for Nachawati Law Group's holdouts
12 June 2026	Order on Special Master meetings	Opt-outs to meet Ellis by mid-July and certify an informed decision
24 August 2026	Order to appear	Mark DiCello ordered to appear by video on 27 August at 1:00 p.m.
27 August 2026	Hearing	Court raised concerns about notice and vetting; set a 15 September in-person hearing in East St. Louis
11 September 2026	Order	15 September hearing cancelled after a report of "substantial progress" by the DiCello firm
2 October 2026	Press reports	900-plus rejections reported; bellwether revival flagged

The 2 June order explained its purpose plainly: the court wanted "a better understanding of the possible reasons" for the "exceedingly high opt-out rates" at the Smith and DiCello firms. It randomly selected roughly 10 percent of each firm's opt-out cases for initial limited discovery, to be followed by full work-up on a rolling basis. The Madison-St. Clair Record reported that the sample came to nearly 75 cases. Selected plaintiffs had to complete a Plaintiff Fact Sheet (PFS) within 14 days and sit for depositions within 60 days, with information about their paraquat exposure, Parkinson's diagnosis, symptoms, and family history. Defendants could seek narrow third-party discovery, such as records from employers or pesticide dealers, with Special Master Ellis overseeing any request.

That procedure functions much like a targeted Lone Pine Order. It does not demand expert reports from every holdout, but it forces a sample of them to prove up the basics early, under oath, before the court decides how to manage the rest. If the sample reveals plaintiffs with no documented exposure or no confirmed diagnosis, the court will have a record supporting broader case-specific orders against the firm's inventory. If the sample shows solid claims, the refusals look like a valuation dispute that only trials will resolve.

The DiCello sequence shows how the process escalates. After reviewing materials, the court on 24 August ordered Mark DiCello personally to appear, held the 27 August conference, and scheduled an in-person follow-up in East St. Louis. That follow-up was cancelled on 11 September after the court received a report that the firm had made "substantial progress" on the issues raised. The orders do not say what progress meant, whether more clients accepted, some dismissed, or vetting documentation was produced.

Can a judge make plaintiffs meet a special master before opting out?

Yes, a judge can require plaintiffs to meet a Special Master before opting out, at least as a case-management measure, and Judge Rosenstengel did exactly that: her 12 June 2026 order required plaintiffs who rejected their offers to meet Special Master Randi Ellis by mid-July so the court could confirm they were "making a fully informed decision not to participate." A plaintiff who still opts out after the meeting must sign a written certification that the decision was informed.

The authority comes from the court's broad power to manage an MDL and supervise counsel, including Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 53 on masters and the court's inherent supervisory power. It does not come from Rule 23, because the paraquat deal is not a class settlement. That distinction matters. In a Settlement Class, the court must approve the settlement as fair, reasonable and adequate, and class members' opt-out right is protected by Class Notice requirements. In an inventory-style MDL deal, by contrast, each plaintiff contracts individually with the defendant through counsel, and the judge has no formal role in approving the terms. A court that inserts itself between a represented plaintiff and that plaintiff's lawyer on the decision to settle is acting at the edge of its customary role.

That is why the order drew criticism. The New Lede reported in July that several lawyers, speaking without attribution, viewed the measures as undue pressure on plaintiffs who are often elderly and living with a progressive, disabling disease. The counterargument is that informed consent is the plaintiff's right, not the lawyer's, and that a court seeing 100 percent refusal rates is entitled to check that each client, not just the firm, made the call. The certification requirement also protects the plaintiff's counsel: a signed, special-master-witnessed acknowledgment is strong evidence against a later malpractice or fee claim by a client who loses at trial.

Neither the meetings nor the certifications compel anyone to settle. Ellis, a veteran mass tort neutral, was appointed to explain offers and options, and the order's stated aim is information, not acceptance. Whether a meeting with a court-appointed official about a settlement the court plainly wants to succeed can be entirely neutral is a fair question, and one that may be raised on appeal if a holdout's case is later dismissed under a case-specific order.

How much is the paraquat settlement worth?

The total value of the paraquat settlement has not been disclosed, and no court filing or company statement has published per-plaintiff amounts; the Master Settlement Agreement is confidential and individual offers are made privately to each eligible plaintiff. Figures circulating online that assign dollar ranges to settlement tiers are projections by marketing sites, not terms from the agreement.

What is public is narrower. Syngenta's interim financial report, published on 27 August 2026, showed about $300 million (CHF 248 million) paid for legal and product liabilities in the first half of 2026, according to swissinfo.ch, without a breakdown by product. The same report disclosed a further confidential agreement in June 2026 to settle "a number of pending product liability claims," again without saying whether paraquat was involved. The establishment of a Qualified Settlement Fund in March 2026 indicates that money was positioned to flow to participating claimants, but the size of the fund has not been reported.

For holdouts, the absence of a public number cuts both ways. They cannot be accused of rejecting a figure the market knows is generous, and the defendants cannot point to a public benchmark when they argue the offers were fair. But the absence also means the holdouts' only route to a public valuation is a verdict, which is precisely what the defense has so far avoided.

Will there be paraquat bellwether trials?

Paraquat bellwether trials are likely if the holdout bloc stays large, because Judge Rosenstengel is expected to revive the Bellwether Trial program she suspended for settlement talks; no new federal trial date has been set as of 3 October 2026. The MDL's first bellwether trial had been scheduled for 14 October 2025 before it was vacated to make room for settlement.

Any revived program runs into the litigation's central legal obstacle. On 17 April 2024, Judge Rosenstengel granted the defendants' Daubert Challenge to Martin Wells, a Cornell University statistician who was the plaintiffs' sole expert on General Causation, finding that his methodology did not meet the reliability standard. Because Wells was the only witness offered to prove that paraquat can cause Parkinson's disease at all, the court granted summary judgment in the first four bellwether cases the same day. Plaintiffs appealed; the Seventh Circuit heard argument in February 2025. In April 2025, as the settlement came together, both sides jointly asked the court of appeals to hold the appeal in abeyance, and it remains paused.

That sequence shapes the opt-out fight in three ways. First, a revived bellwether program cannot sensibly proceed without resolving general causation, which means either un-pausing the Seventh Circuit appeal or allowing holdouts to offer new experts in later-selected cases. Second, defendants holding a district-court ruling that knocked out the plaintiffs' only causation expert have every reason to argue that holdouts' cases should be dismissed on the same basis; holdouts have every reason to want the appeal decided. Third, the court has already selected replacement bellwether candidates and opened case-specific discovery in a new pool, so the infrastructure for trials exists even if the dates do not.

For the defense, a revived trial track is a calculated risk. A defense verdict, or a second Daubert win against new experts, would collapse holdouts' leverage and likely push stragglers into the program. A plaintiffs' verdict, especially one with Punitive Damages, would reset the value of every unresolved paraquat claim and invite participants who accepted offers to ask why they took less.

How do the Philadelphia paraquat cases affect the federal MDL?

The Philadelphia paraquat cases give holdouts and their firms a second, state-court route to trial that the federal MDL judge does not control, which strengthens the opt-out bloc's leverage. Roughly 2,000 paraquat cases are coordinated in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Complex Litigation Center before Judge Joshua Roberts.

Syngenta and Chevron moved to send many of those cases, filed by plaintiffs from Iowa, Louisiana, Texas and other states, back to plaintiffs' home jurisdictions under the doctrine of forum non conveniens. Judge Roberts denied the motions, finding that the companies had not shown sufficient reason to override the plaintiffs' choice of forum or that keeping the cases in Philadelphia would cause significant difficulty or expense. In a July 2026 opinion recommending that the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirm, he described the transfer effort as a "Hail Mary attempt to delay and/or avoid bringing these cases to resolution" and pointed to the efficiency of coordinating the cases through centralized discovery, pretrial rulings and bellwether trials. The appeal concerns nine bellwether cases; a reversal would help defendants push out-of-state claims out of Philadelphia, while an affirmance keeps one of the country's most plaintiff-friendly mass tort venues open to paraquat claimants.

Trial settings have already produced settlement pressure: in July 2025, with a trial approaching, Syngenta settled a paraquat lawsuit brought by a Parkinson's patient, according to The New Lede. For federal holdouts, the state docket matters in two ways: as a trial setting the MDL judge cannot pause, and as a place where general causation will be litigated under Pennsylvania's Frye-based standard rather than the federal Daubert framework that produced the Wells exclusion.

The regulatory backdrop

Three regulatory developments since the 2025 deal feed directly into how each side values the claims.

Federal. In January 2025, a federal court allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its 2021 interim registration decision for paraquat so the agency could reconsider whether the herbicide volatilizes and drifts to bystanders. In October 2025, the EPA issued a memorandum concluding that there was greater uncertainty about volatilization than previously understood and that more data was needed. Paraquat remains registered for restricted use under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which matters for any federal Preemption (Products) argument; the reopened review leaves plaintiffs arguing the agency's earlier safety conclusions are no longer settled.

California. The Department of Pesticide Regulation began re-evaluating paraquat in 2024. When it required additional studies, registrants began cancelling instead of supplying them, starting in April 2026. The last registrant cancelled on 6 August 2026, and the department announced the result on 10 August. Existing stock can be sold for two years after each cancellation.

Market. Syngenta's March 2026 decision to stop producing Gramoxone removes the original brand from the market even though more than 750 companies sell generic paraquat worldwide. Plaintiffs will present the exit as corroboration; Syngenta will present it, as it did in its announcement, as a commercial decision driven by generic competition.

None of these steps is a finding that paraquat causes Parkinson's disease. But they change what a jury in a 2027 bellwether would hear compared with a jury in 2025, and holdout counsel are pricing that difference.

What it means for claimants' counsel, defendants, funders, and other MDLs

For claimants' counsel with opt-out inventories. Expect the court to require proof of basics before anything else: documented exposure, a confirmed Parkinson's diagnosis, and a client who personally understood and declined the offer. Firms should assume their holdouts will be sampled, deposed, and compared with the settlement program's qualification data, which Special Master Ellis already holds under CMO 24. Retainer files, intake records and client communications about the offer are now discoverable in practice if not in form. Firms with general-causation experts ready to replace Wells, or a credible plan for a Pennsylvania state-court trial, hold the leverage; firms without either should expect the court to treat refusals as a vetting problem rather than a valuation dispute.

For defendants. Syngenta and Chevron have a federal court that is visibly invested in the deal's success and a district-court Daubert ruling that, if affirmed, would gut the holdouts' cases. The risk is in Philadelphia and in any revived bellwether where a new expert survives. The defense also has to weigh whether to un-pause the Seventh Circuit appeal: a win is decisive, but a reversal would hand every holdout and many participants a rationale for higher numbers.

For participating plaintiffs. Accepting the offer ends the claim on the agreement's terms; a later plaintiffs' verdict for a holdout ordinarily does not reopen accepted settlements. Participants' payments depend on the program's funding conditions, which have not been made public, so the size of the opt-out bloc may affect timing even for those who accepted.

For litigation funders. Third-Party Litigation Funding exposure in paraquat portfolios now depends on which bucket a claimant falls into. Participating claims convert to a predictable, if confidential, payment through the QSF. Holdout claims become trial-dependent assets with a general-causation hurdle, a multi-year appellate horizon, and, in the sampled cases, early depositions that can shrink value quickly. Funders with lien interests in holdout claims should expect questions about whether funding terms influenced settlement decisions, an issue several states now regulate.

For other MDL judges and settlement designers. The paraquat orders offer a template for courts that suspect firm-level refusal rather than client-level choice: data from the settlement administrator by firm, randomized sampling of holdouts, early PFS and deposition deadlines, and a special-master-witnessed certification. Expect defendants in other inventory deals, including those with participation thresholds such as the talc and Depo-Provera programs, to cite these orders when they want the court to scrutinize concentrated opt-outs. Expect plaintiffs' firms to respond by documenting client consent more carefully before rejecting offers.

Frequently asked questions

How many plaintiffs opted out of the paraquat settlement?

More than 900 plaintiffs had rejected their paraquat settlement offers by late September 2026. The court's June orders show that 100 percent of eligible DiCello Levitt clients, more than 90 percent of eligible Smith Law Firm clients, and 183 of 217 eligible Nachawati Law Group clients declined.

What happens to paraquat plaintiffs who opt out of the settlement?

Plaintiffs who opt out of the paraquat settlement must meet Special Master Randi Ellis and sign a written certification that their decision was fully informed. They return to the litigation track, where some have been randomly selected for early Plaintiff Fact Sheets and depositions, and they face the possibility of revived bellwether trials and the unresolved general-causation ruling.

Is the paraquat settlement final?

The Master Settlement Agreement was executed on 3 September 2025 and a Qualified Settlement Fund was approved in March 2026, so the program is operating. Its total value and any participation threshold are confidential, and the size of the holdout group leaves open whether the program resolves most of the litigation or leaves a substantial residual docket for trial.

When will paraquat settlement payments be made?

No public payment schedule has been released. Payments flow through the Qualified Settlement Fund approved in March 2026 to eligible plaintiffs who accepted offers, and Syngenta reported about $300 million in legal and product-liability payouts in the first half of 2026 without saying how much related to paraquat.

Who is the judge in the paraquat MDL?

Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois presides over MDL No. 3004, In re: Paraquat Products Liability Litigation, with Randi Ellis serving as Special Master. The parallel Philadelphia cases are before Judge Joshua Roberts of the Court of Common Pleas.

The bottom line

Paraquat settlement opt-outs have turned a deal that looked like the end of a nine-year litigation into a two-track case. Participating plaintiffs are being paid through a confidential program; a concentrated bloc of more than 900 holdouts, led by firms that refused nearly every offer, is betting that a jury, a Seventh Circuit reversal, or a Philadelphia courtroom will value their claims more highly. Judge Rosenstengel has spent four months testing whether those refusals reflect informed client choices or inadequate vetting. The next order to watch is the one that sets trial dates, because that will show whether the court has concluded the holdouts are serious enough to try.