Corteva Agriscience is currently defending or resolving lawsuits on several fronts. In June 2026, the company agreed to pay $85 million to settle a farmers’ antitrust class action over pesticide loyalty rebates, though a parallel Federal Trade Commission case and the private case against co-defendant Syngenta both continue. Separately, Corteva is a party to a New Jersey PFAS settlement valued at more than $2.5 billion, a Massachusetts PFAS suit involving firefighting foam, an ERISA class action brought by former DuPont employees, and a patent fight with agricultural biotech startup Inari Agriculture heading to trial in September 2026.
The $85 Million Antitrust Settlement With Farmers
The largest recent development is the settlement of a nationwide class action brought by more than 100,000 U.S. farmers. The case, consolidated as In re: Crop Protection Products Loyalty Program Antitrust Litigation (No. 1:23-md-03062) before Chief Judge Thomas D. Schroeder in the Middle District of North Carolina, accused Corteva of paying the country’s seven largest crop protection distributors to keep buying its branded pesticides after key patents had expired, blocking cheaper generics from reaching farmers.
According to the consolidated complaint, distributors received rebates worth 2% to 10% of total sales, but only if they sourced 85% to 99% of their crop protection products from Corteva. Distributors that fell short allegedly faced canceled contracts or restricted product access. Three active ingredients sat at the center of the case: the herbicides rimsulfuron and acetochlor, and the insecticide and nematicide oxamyl. Plaintiffs estimated the arrangement inflated prices by at least 20% above competitive levels.
On January 28, 2025, Judge Schroeder issued a mixed ruling. The court dismissed the farmers’ federal antitrust damages claims on the ground that farmers, who bought from distributors and retailers, were “indirect purchasers” barred from federal damages under the Illinois Brick doctrine. That ruling also eliminated the possibility of treble damages. But the court allowed state-law antitrust and unfair trade practices claims to proceed and preserved the farmers’ ability to seek injunctive relief. Many states allow indirect purchasers to bring antitrust claims under their own statutes, and plaintiffs filed an amended consolidated complaint in July 2025.
By December 2025, the farmers sought class certification and calculated damages of more than $883 million against Corteva and more than $1.2 billion against Syngenta.
On June 10, 2026, plaintiffs moved for preliminary approval of the $85 million settlement with Corteva. Under the terms, Corteva agreed to deposit the funds into escrow within 14 days. The settlement class covers farmers who purchased crop protection products containing acetochlor, rimsulfuron, oxamyl, or methoxyfenozide between October 2018 and May 2026, a group expected to exceed 100,000. The $85 million figure represents roughly 10% of the total damages calculated by plaintiffs’ expert. Farmers’ attorneys explained that continuing to litigate against Corteva would have required “significant additional resources” and increased the “complexity of the case, particularly at trial.” Corteva said it was “pleased to resolve this matter and continue to focus on our business, our customers and our work.”
The settlement resolves only the claims against Corteva. Plaintiffs described Syngenta’s loyalty program as “entirely separate and distinct” from Corteva’s and said the case will continue against Syngenta. As of mid-2026, there was no indication Syngenta had entered settlement discussions in the private litigation.
The FTC Case Is Still Pending
The private settlement does not end Corteva’s antitrust exposure. In September 2022, the FTC and a bipartisan coalition of ten state attorneys general sued Corteva and Syngenta in the same North Carolina federal court, describing the loyalty programs as an “illegal pay-to-block scheme” designed to artificially extend patent monopolies and force farmers to pay “millions of dollars more” than they would in a competitive market. The government seeks to permanently bar both companies from operating the programs.
In January 2024, the court denied motions to dismiss by both defendants, finding that plaintiffs had adequately alleged the loyalty programs “leverage the defendants’ monopolist status and the market’s substantial barriers to entry to exclude competition.” As of mid-2026, the FTC case remains pending. Corteva has filed a motion for summary judgment and asked the court to defer setting a trial date. When the FTC pushed for an October 2026 trial, Corteva called the timeline “unreasonable and unfair” and asked that any trial be pushed to at least the first quarter of 2027.
The $2.5 Billion New Jersey PFAS Settlement
On August 4, 2025, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced a proposed settlement with Corteva, DuPont de Nemours, and The Chemours Company to resolve claims tied to contamination from PFAS, the persistent synthetic chemicals often called “forever chemicals.” The total value exceeds $2.5 billion.
The cash component is $875 million, payable over 25 years starting no earlier than January 2026. Under a 2021 cost-sharing agreement among the three companies, Chemours pays 50%, DuPont pays 35.5%, and Corteva pays 14.5%, or roughly $72 million of the cash total. Of the $875 million, about $225 million is designated for natural resource damages, $525 million for environmental cleanup, and about $125 million for penalties, legal costs, and punitive damages.
Beyond the cash, the companies committed to a remediation fund of up to $1.2 billion and a $475 million backup reserve fund to ensure cleanup at four contaminated New Jersey industrial sites proceeds without public funding. The agreement also includes the transfer or permanent preservation of nearly 1,500 acres of land near the affected areas.
Formal notice of the proposed settlement was published in the New Jersey Register in September 2025, followed by a 60-day public comment period. The court directed NJDEP to file a motion for approval by November 21, 2025. Final judicial approval has not been confirmed in available filings.
Massachusetts PFAS Firefighting Foam Suit
Corteva is one of 15 companies named in a PFAS suit filed in May 2022 by then-Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina as part of a broader multidistrict litigation, and alleges that manufacturers of PFAS-containing firefighting foam marketed the products as safe while concealing evidence of health and environmental risks. The complaint states that contamination has affected at least 126 public drinking water systems across 86 Massachusetts communities. The Commonwealth is seeking cleanup costs, monitoring expenses, and restoration of natural resources.
Former DuPont Employees’ Retirement Benefits Case
Cockerill v. Corteva, Inc. (No. 21-3966, E.D. Pa.) is a separate class action brought by former DuPont employees who claim they were denied retirement benefits after DuPont’s 2019 restructuring into three companies: Corteva, Dow Inc., and the new DuPont de Nemours. Employees alleged the spin-off effectively “terminated” them on paper to transfer them to the new DuPont entity, cutting off eligibility for early and optional retirement benefits under the original DuPont pension plan. Internal projections cited by the court showed that eliminating these benefits would reduce plan obligations by approximately $4 billion.
Judge Michael M. Baylson ruled partly for the employees. The court found the companies had improperly denied optional retirement benefits to the over-50 class, holding that the defendants’ interpretation was “arbitrary and capricious” and that the companies breached their fiduciary duties under ERISA. The court ruled against the under-50 class, finding the plan language on early retirement benefits ambiguous enough that the companies’ reading was reasonable.
On May 30, 2025, the court entered final judgment ordering the defendants to implement the ruling and provide benefits to the certified classes, and awarded plaintiffs’ counsel approximately $9.1 million in fees and costs. Corteva and DuPont appealed to the Third Circuit, which in July 2025 refused to halt the judgment while the appeal proceeds.
The Inari Agriculture Patent Case
In September 2023, Corteva sued agricultural biotech startup Inari Agriculture in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging that Inari misappropriated hundreds of Corteva’s protected seed varieties. The complaint claims Inari obtained Corteva’s genetically modified maize seeds from the American Type Culture Collection, a public research depository, and then exported them to Belgium for commercial gene-editing work in violation of restrictions limiting the seeds to non-commercial research. Corteva’s claims include infringement of U.S. Patent No. 8,575,434, violations of the Plant Variety Protection Act, and breach of the depository’s material transfer agreement.
Inari has counterclaimed that Corteva’s intellectual property is invalid and that the suit amounts to anticompetitive bullying. In August 2024, the court denied Inari’s motion to dismiss. A March 2026 ruling by Judge John Frank Murphy struck portions of Inari’s expert damages report, which had included a “high nine-figure” claim that Corteva’s suit destroyed Inari’s company value; the court found the valuation opinions were disclosed too late and exceeded what Inari had revealed during fact discovery. Trial is scheduled for September 23, 2026.