Scott Partridge. Courtesy photo.

International life sciences giant Bayer AG announced Thursday that Monsanto Co. executive Scott Partridge is the new general counsel for its expanded U.S. operations.

Partridge, who was heading Bayer's strategy-competition policy team since June, replaces Jan Heinemann as general counsel, effective Oct. 1.

Germany-based Bayer acquired Monsanto in June after a two-year regulatory struggle. The $63 billion acquisition made Bayer—previously best known for its pharmaceuticals—the biggest seed and agricultural-chemicals maker in the world.

In a statement, Partridge said, “It is an honor to join the Bayer team as U.S. general counsel at this critical moment in the company's history. There is much to do, with many opportunities ahead, and I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and working with the executive team to build the business.” He was not immediately available for further comment.

At St. Louis-based Monsanto, Partridge served as the vice president for global strategy, overseeing global competition policy, coordinating strategic advocacy on critical issues and leading the company's dispute resolution activities. He previously served as Monsanto's chief deputy general counsel until the global strategy vice presidency was created for him in 2008, according to his bio.

The bio says after graduating from Tulane University School of Law, he worked 27 years in private practice—primarily in litigation, crisis management and dispute resolution. He also serves on the board of the International institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution.

At Monsanto, Partridge designed the company's relationship-based dispute resolution and conflict avoidance model. The model was created for use with multinational competitors, but the core principles have been successfully applied to other contexts such as customer relationships, complex litigation and class actions.

The program puts businesspeople and scientists at the lead of strategic relationships with the responsibility to identify potential conflicts and explore opportunities to work together on future business ventures and new research collaborations. As a result, Monsanto no longer had any litigation with any competitor or major client.

In recognition of his unique work, the CPR honored Partridge and Monsanto in 2016 with its inaugural Inspiring Innovation Award.

His legal department will still have its hands full, though. It must help with the continued integration of Monsanto into Bayer's crop science division.

In addition, before the merger Monsanto's now-retired general counsel David Snively was engaged in battles on at least three major legal fronts.

First, a jury in August awarded $289 million to a school groundskeeper who claimed the herbicide Roundup gave him cancer. Some 9,000 other people have joined suits against Roundup.

Monsanto, and now Bayer, have said Roundup is safe and they have the scientific studies to prove it. They are appealing the jury verdict and defending the other suits.

On a second front, Monsanto also has been sued by at least 12 West Coast municipalities and states, plus Ohio, over the presence of PCBs—or polychlorinated biphenyl—in the environment. PCBs were man-made chemicals used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications until they were banned in 1979. Monsanto produced most of the PCBs used in the U.S., according to the suits.

In April, in its last quarterly financial report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission just prior to the merger, Monsanto said it was “defending lawsuits in various state and federal courts, in which approximately 5,200 plaintiffs claim to have been injured by exposure to glyphosate-based [PCB] products manufactured by the company. The majority of plaintiffs have brought actions in state courts in Missouri, Delaware and California, while the remainder of plaintiffs' cases were filed in many different federal courts.”

The report said all the federal cases were transferred in October 2016 to the Northern District of California. “The company believes that it has meritorious factual and legal defenses to these cases and is vigorously defending them,” the report noted.

In the third area of litigation, the report said legal actions have been filed in Brazil that raise various issues challenging the right to collect certain royalties for Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans. “These issues are currently under judicial review in Brazil. Monsanto believes it has meritorious legal arguments and will continue to represent its interests vigorously in these proceedings,” it stated.