Paraquat Lawsuit: MDL 3004 Status, Settlement Offers and Who May Qualify

Paraquat is one of the most tightly controlled herbicides in American agriculture — so restricted that the EPA will not let a licensed applicator hand the sprayer to someone working under their supervision. Thousands of people who mixed, loaded or applied it have since been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and roughly 6,600 of them currently have a case pending in a single federal courtroom in southern Illinois.

This page explains what that litigation actually is, what the court record says about it right now, and what the scientific and regulatory evidence does and does not establish. It is written from primary sources — the court’s own orders, the Judicial Panel’s docket reports, the EPA’s published decisions and the peer-reviewed literature — and every figure on it links to the record it came from.

One thing you will not find here: a settlement amount. A master settlement agreement covering certain individual claims was signed on 3 September 2025, but its payment terms are not public: there is no published payout grid and no court-ordered compensation schedule. Pages that quote you a number are estimating. We explain below exactly why, and what the court record says instead.

Choose the Paraquat Lawsuit Information You Need

See Whether Your Paraquat Claim May Qualify

The questions below take about two minutes. They are the same facts any case review starts with — where and when you were around paraquat, what you were diagnosed with, and when. There is no cost, no obligation, and nothing here promises that a claim will be accepted or that compensation will be paid.

What the Paraquat Lawsuit Is About

Paraquat dichloride is a contact herbicide — it kills green plant tissue on contact rather than being absorbed and carried through the plant. It has been used in the United States since the 1960s, and it became more widely used again as glyphosate-resistant weeds spread across row-crop agriculture.

The lawsuits are not about whether paraquat is dangerous to swallow. That has never been in dispute; a small amount is lethal, which is why the product carries the warnings it does. The claims are about something narrower and harder: whether occupational exposure — the repeated, lower-level contact that comes with mixing, loading, spraying and working in treated fields — causes Parkinson’s disease, and whether the companies that made and sold it knew enough to have warned about that risk.

The principal defendants are Syngenta Crop Protection, which manufactures paraquat products including Gramoxone, and Chevron, which distributed paraquat in the United States under an earlier licensing arrangement. Plaintiffs allege the companies failed to warn users of a neurological risk they knew or should have known about, and that the warnings on the label addressed acute poisoning while saying nothing about long-term neurological harm.

Syngenta and Chevron deny that occupational paraquat exposure causes Parkinson’s disease. That dispute — not liability for poisoning, not whether the product is toxic, but general causation for Parkinson’s at occupational exposure levels — is the question the litigation has been fighting over since 2021, and it is the reason the case has taken the shape it has.

Who May Qualify for a Paraquat Lawsuit

Claims in this litigation generally involve three elements. None of them is a promise of eligibility, and a lawyer evaluating a case will look at all three together rather than in isolation.

Documented exposure to paraquat

The strongest claims involve people who handled the product directly — licensed applicators, farm owners and farmhands who mixed and loaded it, commercial and aerial applicators, and agricultural workers who sprayed it. Claims are also brought by people who lived on or immediately beside treated land, though proving exposure is harder without purchase or application records.

A Parkinson’s disease or parkinsonism diagnosis

The diagnosis is normally made by a neurologist or movement-disorder specialist. The medical record matters a great deal here, because the diagnosis date interacts with the filing deadline in the state whose law applies.

Timing that still falls inside the deadline

Every state sets its own limit for filing a personal injury claim, and most of them start the clock when the injury is discovered or reasonably should have been. Because Parkinson’s develops slowly and is diagnosed years after exposure, the discovery rule often matters more than the exposure date. This is covered in more detail below.

A claim is not disqualified simply because paraquat was used decades ago, or because the person who was exposed has since died — in many states a surviving family member can bring a wrongful death or survival action. Those rules vary enough that they are worth asking about directly rather than assuming.

Paraquat MDL 3004: Where the Litigation Stands

In June 2021 the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated federal paraquat cases into a single proceeding: In re Paraquat Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3004, before Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel in the Southern District of Illinois, case number 3:21-md-3004-NJR. An MDL does not merge the cases into one claim. Each plaintiff keeps their own case; the pretrial work — discovery, expert challenges, scheduling — is handled once, by one judge, instead of hundreds of times.

As of the Judicial Panel’s docket report dated 1 October 2026, MDL 3004 has 6,602 actions pending out of 8,495 filed historically. That makes it one of the larger active product liability MDLs in the federal system.

The 2024 Daubert ruling, and why it mattered

The MDL’s first group of bellwether cases — trial cases selected to test how juries respond to the evidence — did not reach a jury. The court excluded the plaintiffs’ general causation expert under Daubert, and the cases were dismissed in April 2024. The court later described this plainly in its own order: The first bellwether cases did not survive a Daubert challenge and were dismissed in April 2024.

This is the single most important fact about the paraquat litigation, and it is the one most often left out. A Daubert exclusion is not a finding that paraquat is safe; it is a ruling that the specific expert testimony offered did not meet the standard for admissibility. But it removed the scientific testimony the first cases depended on, and everything since has been shaped by it.

The stay, and the move toward settlement

After the bellwether dismissals the proceedings were stayed while the parties negotiated. By October 2025 the court recorded that the stay has been extended three times to allow a settlement agreement to be finalized. The stay was extended again at the end of December 2025, cancelling the January 2026 status conference.

2026: summary judgment, dismissals and opt-out discovery

The litigation restarted on several fronts during 2026:

• 2 February 2026 — the defendants moved for partial summary judgment.
• 11 February 2026 — Case Management Order No. 23 changed the rules for leaving the litigation. Because a dispositive motion was now pending, plaintiffs could no longer dismiss their own cases unilaterally; a voluntary dismissal now requires either a stipulation signed by all parties or a court order.
• 2 and 3 June 2026 — the court began selecting opt-out cases for limited discovery, selecting about 10% of two firms’ opt-out cases on 2 June and 20 of a third firm’s cases on 3 June, with fact sheets due within 14 days and depositions within 60 days under the 3 June order.
• 10 June 2026 — the court adopted the Special Master’s recommendation and dismissed 27 member cases without prejudice, for failure to complete the Plaintiff Assessment Questionnaire required by Case Management Order No. 10.

That last point is worth sitting with. Twenty-seven cases were dismissed not on the merits, not because the exposure was weak, but because required paperwork was not completed on time. In an MDL this size, the questionnaires and fact sheets are not formalities.

The Settlement Offers and Why Most Plaintiffs Refused Them

There is a settlement in MDL 3004: co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel and the defendants executed a master settlement agreement for certain individual claims on 3 September 2025 (Case Management Order No. 24). It is not a court-approved class settlement, its terms are not public, and each plaintiff decides whether to accept the offer made under it.

Settlement offers have been made and a large share of plaintiffs have turned them down. The court said so directly in its order of 3 June 2026, recording that a significant number of Plaintiffs in this MDL have chosen not to accept settlement offers and, in one firm’s inventory, that 183 of 217 Plaintiffs…refused to accept it.

That is roughly 84% of that group declining. The court’s response was not to force the issue but to start moving those cases forward individually — selecting opt-out cases at random for limited discovery, with fact sheets and depositions on short deadlines, so that cases which will not settle can be worked up for trial.

For anyone reading this with a potential claim, three things follow:

1. An offer is not an outcome. Whatever has been offered has been judged inadequate by most of the plaintiffs who received it.
2. Opting out has consequences. Cases that decline settlement are not simply parked; they get pulled into individual discovery, with depositions and fact sheets on tight timetables.
3. Nothing about any of this is public in dollar terms. The amounts offered are not in the public record, which is precisely why no honest page can tell you what a paraquat case is worth.

What the EPA Says About Paraquat and Parkinson’s Disease

Most paraquat lawsuit pages skip this section, because the EPA’s position is unhelpful to the claim. We are including it because you will find it eventually, and it is better to understand it now than to be surprised by it later.

The EPA has reviewed the paraquat–Parkinson’s question repeatedly and has not accepted the link. In the interim decision it finalised on 2 August 2021, the agency wrote: After a thorough review of the best available science, as required under FIFRA, EPA has not found a clear link between paraquat exposure from labeled uses and adverse health outcomes such as Parkinson’s disease and cancer. It also noted that There are many studies on paraquat and Parkinson’s Disease that range in quality and provide conflicting results, and that a 2020 update of the Agricultural Health Study reported no association between paraquat exposure and Parkinson’s Disease.

That position was challenged. The California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and others petitioned the Ninth Circuit for review of the 2021 interim decision (Case No. 21-71287), and the EPA agreed to reconsider several issues, including its assessment of Parkinson’s risk. The agency published its reconsideration on 30 January 2024, and reached the same conclusion: the weight of evidence was insufficient to link paraquat exposure from pesticidal use of U.S. registered paraquat products to PD in humans, adding that Parkinson’s Disease is not an expected health outcome of pesticidal use of paraquat, based on the Agency’s analysis of the materials it has reviewed to date.

Why this does not end the lawsuits

A regulatory finding and a civil claim are answering different questions under different standards. The EPA is deciding whether a product can remain registered for use under FIFRA, weighing risks against agricultural benefits across the whole country. A jury in a product liability case is deciding whether, more likely than not, this product caused this person’s disease, and whether the manufacturer should have warned about it. The EPA’s conclusion is evidence a defendant will use, and it is substantial — but it is not the legal test.

What the EPA did restrict

Whatever its position on Parkinson’s, the agency treats paraquat as exceptionally hazardous. Every paraquat product registered in the United States is a Restricted Use Pesticide, and the restriction goes further than for almost any other product: paraquat may not be used by persons working under the supervision of a certified applicator. The certified applicator has to do it themselves. Products must also use closed-system packaging designed to prevent the chemical being poured or transferred by hand.

The 2021 interim decision added further mitigation: limits on aerial application and residential buffers, a prohibition on pressurised handgun and backpack sprayer application, enclosed cabs or respirators for groundboom application, and longer restricted-entry intervals — 48 hours for most crops and 7 days for cotton desiccation.

What the Published Research Found

The scientific record is genuinely mixed, and that is not a hedge — it is the actual state of the literature.

The study most often cited by plaintiffs is Tanner et al. (2011), published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. It was a case-control study nested inside the Agricultural Health Study, comparing 110 Parkinson’s cases — each confirmed by in-person neurological examination by a movement disorder specialist, which is unusually rigorous for this kind of work — against 358 matched controls. It reported that use of pesticides causing oxidative stress was associated with Parkinson’s (OR = 2.0; 95% CI, 1.2–3.6), including paraquat (OR = 2.5; 95% CI, 1.4–4.7).

An odds ratio of 2.5 means paraquat users in that sample had roughly two and a half times the odds of a Parkinson’s diagnosis. The confidence interval does not cross 1.0, so the association was statistically significant.

Against that, the 2020 update of the same Agricultural Health Study cohort — a larger, longer follow-up — reported no association, which is the finding the EPA leaned on. Laboratory work has shown paraquat producing Parkinson’s-like effects in animals, but, as the EPA noted in its 2024 reconsideration, at doses at least fourteen times above the relevant safety thresholds, with respiratory and kidney effects appearing at lower doses than neurological ones.

Reasonable scientists read this record differently. That disagreement is what expert testimony in the MDL has been fighting over, and it is why the first bellwethers turned on a Daubert ruling rather than a jury verdict.

How Paraquat Exposure Happens

Occupational exposure to paraquat is not usually a single dramatic event. It is cumulative and routine, which is part of why it is difficult to document years later.

• Mixing and loading — historically the highest-contact task, and the reason EPA now requires closed-system packaging.
• Application — backpack and handgun sprayers put the applicator closest to the spray; EPA has since prohibited both for paraquat.
• Equipment maintenance — cleaning tanks, clearing nozzles and repairing lines, often without the protection worn during application.
• Re-entry — working in a treated field before the restricted-entry interval has elapsed.
• Drift and proximity — living or working next to treated fields. This is the hardest category to document.

If you are trying to reconstruct your own history, the useful question is not “was I exposed” but “what would show that I was” — which crops, which years, which employer, and whether anything on paper survives.

What a Paraquat Claim Has to Prove

Product liability claims of this kind usually turn on four questions, and it helps to know which one your case is strong or weak on before anyone starts.

1. Exposure. That you were around paraquat, in what role, over what period.
2. General causation. That paraquat is capable of causing Parkinson’s disease at the kind of exposure you had. This is the contested question, and it is decided on expert evidence, not on the individual facts of your case.
3. Specific causation. That paraquat more likely than not caused your Parkinson’s, which means addressing the other recognised contributors — age, genetics, family history, head injury and other exposures.
4. Failure to warn. That the manufacturer knew or should have known of the risk and did not adequately communicate it.

Evidence Commonly Reviewed in a Paraquat Claim

People often assume they have no case because they never kept records. Frequently the records exist somewhere else.

Exposure documentation

• State pesticide applicator licence records — most states maintain these, often going back decades
• Purchase records from farm supply dealers and co-operatives
• Employment records, payroll records and union records showing agricultural work
• Restricted Use Pesticide purchase and application records, which the law requires be kept
• Farm records: crop histories, field maps, spray logs, equipment purchases
• Statements from co-workers, employers, neighbours and family members

Medical documentation

• The neurologist’s or movement-disorder specialist’s diagnosis and the date it was made
• Treatment history, medications and response to them
• Imaging and any specialist testing
• Records showing how the condition has progressed and what it has cost

In MDL 3004, the Plaintiff Assessment Questionnaire is not optional — 27 cases were dismissed in June 2026 for failing to complete it on time. If a claim proceeds, the paperwork deadlines are real deadlines.

Why No Paraquat Settlement Figure Appears on This Page

Search for paraquat settlement amounts and you will find confident numbers — tiers, ranges, averages, “expected” payouts by severity. We do not publish any of them, and here is the reasoning.

• The settlement’s terms are not public. A master settlement agreement was signed in September 2025, but the court’s own 3 June 2026 order records that most plaintiffs in the inventory it was discussing refused their offers, and nothing in the public record fixes values across the litigation.
• The amounts offered are not public. They are not in any order, docket entry or filing we could find. A number that is not in the record came from somewhere else.
• No bellwether has produced a verdict. The first group was dismissed on Daubert in April 2024. There is no jury award to reason from.
• General causation is unresolved. Until it is settled, the range of possible outcomes runs from substantial recoveries to nothing at all.

Our view is that publishing an invented range on a page people read while deciding what to do about a Parkinson’s diagnosis is the wrong thing to do. When there is a figure in the record, it will be on this page with a link to the record it came from. How we handle settlement figures explains the standard we hold ourselves to.

How a Paraquat Claim May Be Evaluated

Where compensation is available in cases of this kind, the factors that move it are reasonably consistent across product liability litigation, even though no paraquat-specific schedule exists:

• Strength and documentation of exposure — duration, role, frequency, and what survives on paper
• Severity and stage of disease — and how far it has progressed since diagnosis
• Age at diagnosis — an earlier diagnosis generally means a longer period of care and lost earnings
• Medical costs incurred and reasonably projected
• Lost earnings and lost earning capacity
• Care needs, including family members who have given up work to provide it
• Alternative explanations for the diagnosis that a defendant will raise
• State law, which governs the deadline, the damages available and any cap

Paraquat Lawsuit Statute of Limitations

The filing deadline is the most common way a viable claim is lost, and it is governed by state law rather than by the MDL.

Most personal injury limitation periods run two or three years, but the question that usually decides a paraquat case is when the clock started. Many states apply a discovery rule: time runs from when the claimant knew, or reasonably should have known, that the injury might be connected to the exposure. For a disease that develops over decades and is diagnosed long after the last application, that date is often far closer to the diagnosis than to the exposure.

Some states also apply a statute of repose, which can bar a claim a fixed number of years after the product was sold regardless of when the disease appeared. Wrongful death claims normally run from the date of death and have their own, often shorter, period.

Because these rules differ by state and interact in ways that are not obvious, the sensible step is to have the dates looked at rather than to work out the deadline yourself. If the deadline has passed, nothing else about the claim matters.

Paraquat Lawsuit FAQ

Fourteen questions, each answered from the record, with the source attached to the answer.

Paraquat Lawsuit Sources and Official References

Every factual claim on this page comes from one of the records below. They are the primary sources — the court’s own orders, the Judicial Panel’s docket reports, the EPA’s published decisions and the peer-reviewed literature — not secondary reporting about them.

Court record

• U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois — Paraquat Products Liability Litigation, the court’s own document index for MDL 3004
• JPML, Pending MDL Dockets by Actions Pending, report dated 1 October 2026 — the source of the 6,602 / 8,495 figures
• Order regarding Attorney Aimee Wagstaff, 6 October 2025 — records the Daubert dismissals and the three stay extensions
• Case Management Order No. 23, Relating to Voluntary Dismissals, 11 February 2026
• Order Selecting Opt-Out Cases for Limited Discovery, 3 June 2026 — the source of the 183-of-217 figure
• Order Adopting Special Master’s Report and Recommendations, 10 June 2026 — the 27 dismissals under CMO 10

Regulatory record

• EPA, Paraquat Dichloride — restricted use status, applicator rules and closed-system requirements
• EPA Finalizes New, Stronger Safety Measures for Pesticide Paraquat, 2 August 2021 — the interim decision and its mitigation measures
• EPA’s Preliminary Supplemental Consideration of Certain Issues, 30 January 2024 — the agency’s reconsideration of the Parkinson’s question
• Federal Register notice, 1 February 2024, docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0855 — explains the Ninth Circuit petition behind the reconsideration

Scientific literature

• Tanner et al., “Rotenone, Paraquat, and Parkinson’s Disease”, Environmental Health Perspectives, 2011 — the OR 2.5 (95% CI 1.4–4.7) finding

Related Paraquat and Agricultural Chemical Resources

Request a Free, No-Obligation Paraquat Case Review

If you handled paraquat and have since been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the two things worth establishing early are whether your exposure can be documented and whether your state’s deadline has passed. Both are answerable quickly, and neither costs anything to ask about.

A trained case advisor — who may not be an attorney — reviews what you send and explains what your options look like. There is no cost, no obligation, and no commitment of any kind. We do not promise that a claim will be accepted, that compensation will be paid, or that any particular outcome will follow.

For developments as they happen — including the Supreme Court’s preemption ruling in Monsanto v. Durnell and what it means for failure-to-warn claims — see our paraquat litigation tracker.

Start your free case review — or call 855-664-8713, confidential and open 24/7.