Table of Contents

WHAT PARAQUAT IS AND WHO GETS EXPOSED IN CALIFORNIA

Paraquat is a contact herbicide sold under names including Gramoxone, and every paraquat product in the United States is a Restricted Use Product that only a certified applicator may handle. That restriction tells you how the exposure happens. It is an occupational chemical. The people who end up sick are the ones who mixed it, loaded it, sprayed it, rode the tractor behind it, or lived beside a field that got treated year after year.

California uses more of it than most states, concentrated in farm country. Growers reach for paraquat on cotton, almonds, walnuts, stone fruit, and as a pre-harvest desiccant, and they reach for it more often when weeds stop responding to glyphosate. The exposure is rarely one dramatic event. It builds over seasons.

The EPA tightened the handling rules in its July 2021 interim decision. Aerial application was limited and residential buffers added, pressurized handgun and backpack sprayer use was prohibited, larger groundboom jobs now require an enclosed cab or a respirator, and restricted-entry intervals went up on several crops. Those rules only run forward. They do nothing for someone who was spraying under the old ones.

HOW PARAQUAT EXPOSURE CONNECTS TO PARKINSON’S DISEASE

THE DOPAMINE PATHWAY

Parkinson’s disease develops when the brain cells that produce dopamine die off. Dopamine carries the signals that let you start a movement, hold a limb steady, and keep your balance. Lose those cells and the symptoms arrive. Tremor, rigidity, a slowing gait, trouble with fine motor tasks. Researchers studying paraquat have focused on oxidative stress in exactly that region of the brain.

ROUTES OF EXPOSURE

Paraquat reaches the body through the skin, through inhaled mist and dust, and through the mouth. Drift matters. A worker in the next row and a family in the house across the road can both take in the chemical without ever opening a container. The dose in those cases is small and repeated, which is the pattern the Parkinson’s research examines.

WHAT THE EPA SAYS, AND WHAT IT DOES NOT SAY

The EPA’s current position is that it has not found a clear link between paraquat exposure from labeled uses and health outcomes like Parkinson’s disease. Read that sentence closely. It is limited to labeled uses, and it is a regulatory finding under a pesticide statute, not a verdict on causation in an injury case. Courts decide causation on the evidence in front of them, expert by expert, case by case.

CALIFORNIA HAS STARTED PHASING PARAQUAT OUT

Paraquat is on its way out of California. The Department of Pesticide Regulation announced on August 10, 2026 that every manufacturer has voluntarily cancelled its California registration for paraquat products. Cancellations began in April. The last registrant pulled its registration on August 6, 2026.

The pressure that produced that result came from Sacramento. Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1963 on September 27, 2024, and it gave DPR a hard deadline: reevaluate paraquat and decide whether to keep it, restrict it, suspend it, or cancel it in this state before January 1, 2029. DPR opened the reevaluation on November 6, 2024. Its preliminary reports flagged a potential association between paraquat exposure and thyroid effects and birth defects, and the agency ordered registrants to produce missing human health toxicology data by June 5, 2026. The registrations came off the books instead.

The supply is shrinking nationally too. Syngenta announced on March 3, 2026 that it would stop producing Gramoxone by June 30, 2026 and stop selling it by the end of that year. Other manufacturers still make paraquat. Cancellation is not removal. California law lets licensed dealers keep selling a cancelled product for up to two years after each cancellation takes effect, so paraquat can still reach fields well past this announcement. And a cancellation in 2026 does nothing for a person who was mixing and spraying in 2004. What it does change is the record. A state agency has now put on paper that it had unanswered questions about this chemical’s effects on people.

The federal picture moved too, and not toward certainty. In November 2025 the EPA published a memorandum on new vapor pressure data and said there is greater uncertainty about paraquat volatilizing into the air than the agency previously considered. It signaled a Data Call-In to manufacturers for more information. Volatilization drives bystander exposure. An open question there is an open question about everyone downwind of a treated field.

Why this matters to a claim. A state reevaluation generates documents: exposure modeling, use reports, comments from the registrants themselves. Those records become discoverable background in California cases, and they speak directly to what manufacturers knew and when they knew it. A federal finding that stops at labeled uses does not close that door.

Your filing deadline does not move. Regulatory review runs on its own calendar, and it is a slow one. The statute of limitations does not pause for it.

WHERE THE PARAQUAT LITIGATION STANDS NOW

Federal paraquat cases are consolidated before Chief Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel in the Southern District of Illinois, as MDL 3004. About 6,700 cases were pending there in early August 2026. Consolidation handles pretrial work in one place. It is not a class action, and every claim is still an individual claim with its own facts, its own medical records, and its own value.

Bellwether trials have been on hold while a settlement process works through the docket. A qualified settlement fund was approved in March 2026 to administer payments. Terms are not public. The process has not been smooth. A large share of claimants turned the offer down, and in the summer of 2026 the court ordered plaintiffs who opted out to sit with a special master and, in selected cases, to give depositions. No paraquat case has reached a jury verdict yet. One case outside the federal group, Anderson v. Syngenta, is set for trial in Contra Costa County Superior Court on March 1, 2027, and it would be the first paraquat case in front of a jury.

Be careful with what you read elsewhere about payouts. Advertised settlement ranges for paraquat are estimates, not published results. Treat them as advertising. No lawyer can tell you what a case is worth before reviewing the exposure history and the medical file.

WHO MAY HAVE A PARAQUAT CLAIM

The core group is people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease after meaningful paraquat exposure. That includes licensed applicators and the crews who mixed and loaded for them, farmworkers who worked treated ground, tractor and groundboom operators, agricultural mechanics who serviced spray equipment, and people who lived on or beside farmland where paraquat was applied. Proximity counts.

Family members of someone who died with Parkinson’s after that kind of exposure may be able to bring a wrongful death claim. California also allows a survival action on behalf of the estate. What that action covers narrowed on January 1, 2026, when the law allowing an estate to recover a decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering expired, so survival claims filed since then generally reach economic losses only. The two claims are separate. They are often filed together.

Two things tend to decide whether a claim is viable. First, whether the exposure can be documented, by employer, by location, by years worked. Second, whether the diagnosis is confirmed by a neurologist or movement disorder specialist. Bring both. A firm can evaluate the case quickly.

WHAT TO GATHER BEFORE YOU CALL A LAWYER

Gather your work history, any record of the product, your medical records, and the names of people who worked beside you. Paraquat cases are built on exposure history, and that history lives in paperwork people throw away. Start now.

Your work history, employer by employer. Names of farms, ranches, and labor contractors, the years you worked each one, the crops, and the counties. Pay stubs, W-2s, and Social Security earnings statements all help reconstruct dates you no longer remember precisely.

Any record of the product itself. Product names on the jugs, purchase or delivery invoices, mixing logs, and applicator license or training certificates. California growers file pesticide use reports with their county agricultural commissioner, and those filings can confirm what was applied on ground you worked.

Your medical records and the date of diagnosis. The neurologist’s notes, the date Parkinson’s was first diagnosed, and the treatment history since. The diagnosis date frequently sets the filing clock. Pin it down.

Names of coworkers and neighbors. People who worked the same fields can confirm what was sprayed and how. Witnesses get harder to find every year.

Do not sign anything from a manufacturer or an insurer. Not a release, not a medical authorization, not a recorded statement. Have a lawyer read it first.

CALIFORNIA PARAQUAT FAQS

HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO FILE A PARAQUAT CLAIM IN CALIFORNIA?

Generally two years, but the date it starts from is the part that matters. California injury claims run two years from injury, and for exposure to a hazardous substance the clock typically starts when you knew or reasonably should have known that the exposure caused the harm. A wrongful death claim runs from the date of death. If a public entity was involved in the application, a written claim generally has to be presented to that entity within six months. These deadlines are unforgiving. Get the diagnosis date in front of a lawyer early.

DO I NEED TO HAVE APPLIED PARAQUAT MYSELF?

No. Mixers, loaders, equipment mechanics, field crews working treated ground, and people who lived next to sprayed fields have all brought claims. What matters is documented exposure, not a license. Bystander and drift exposure is a live part of the science, and it is the exact question the EPA reopened when it flagged uncertainty about paraquat volatilizing in November 2025.

IS THIS A CLASS ACTION?

No. Federal paraquat cases are grouped in an MDL, which coordinates pretrial discovery for thousands of individual lawsuits in one court. Your case keeps its own facts and its own value. In a class action you would share a single outcome with everyone else, and that is not how this litigation is structured.

CAN I STILL BRING A CLAIM IF THE EPA SAYS THERE IS NO CLEAR LINK?

Yes. A pesticide registration decision and a civil injury case answer different questions under different standards. The EPA weighs risks and benefits under a federal pesticide statute and confines its finding to labeled uses. A court asks whether this product injured this person, and it decides that on expert testimony and evidence.

WHAT DOES A PARAQUAT LAWYER COST?

Nothing up front. Gomez Trial Attorneys handles paraquat claims on contingency, so there is no attorney’s fee unless the case recovers money. The firm advances case costs, including the toxicology and medical experts these claims require. Whether any of those costs are charged back to you if there is no recovery is set out in the written fee agreement, and we go through that agreement with you before you sign it. The first conversation is free.

TALK TO A CALIFORNIA PARAQUAT LAWYER

These are documents cases. They are won by reconstructing where someone stood, what was sprayed, and who knew what the chemical did, and that work takes a firm willing to pull county use reports and depose the people who wrote the labels. Gomez Trial Attorneys brings defective product and toxic exposure claims across California from our San Diego office, and our California personal injury team prepares every case as though it will be tried.

If you or a family member worked with paraquat and has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, do not wait. Start the file now. Call 833-GET-GOMEZ, in English or Spanish, or use our contact page. The consultation costs nothing, and every year that passes takes more of the paperwork with it.

This page is general information about California law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. We do not give medical advice. Talk to your doctor about your diagnosis and to a lawyer about your claim.