On January 25, 2023, the German company Bayer filed a lawsuit against four Missouri farmers in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Missouri. Bayer alleges that the farmers used a non-registered version of the organochlorine herbicide Dicamba, produced and sold by the company, on soybeans resistant to the product. This use is said to be responsible for the drift of Dicamba and damage to surrounding crops.

Dicamba-resistant soybeans, launched by Bayer in 2016, were registered before the new version of Dicamba in the USA. Some farmers, with the aim of being able to use Dicamba on soybean plantations, sprayed the old version of Dicamba, which was legal to buy but prohibited for use on crops, leading the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to repeatedly re-examine the studies for the registration of the new version of Dicamba. In 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA had underestimated the risks of using the old version of Dicamba (No. 960 F.3d 1120, 1124-25.

Bayer claims that the four farmers have violated the binding conditions of use and acted negligently. Bayer also claims that the farmers' behavior damaged the company's reputation with the EPA and made it more difficult to obtain registration for the new version of Dicamba, thereby infringing intellectual property rights.

This can be seen as Bayer's attempt to shift the burden of responsibility for harmful effects arising from the use of one of their products onto these farmers.

This can be seen as Bayer's attempt to shift the burden of responsibility for harmful effects arising from the use of one of their products onto these farmers.