Bayer’s $648 Million Toxic PCB Accord Wins Initial Approval (1)

Bayer AG won preliminary court approval for a $648 million settlement of suits over environmental contamination tied to now-banned chemicals made by its Monsanto Co. unit.

The proposed deal will cover more than 2,500 cities and counties that claimed harm from polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, according to federal court filings. PCBs were banned in the U.S. in 1979 after researchers found they posed a cancer threat.

The settlement would resolve a major legal headache for Bayer, the German conglomerate that acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion, becoming the world’s largest seed- and agricultural-chemicals maker. Monsanto was the exclusive ...