As we noted in our last report, on September 19, 2022, a Cook County (Illinois) jury awarded $363 million to a plaintiff who alleged that she developed breast cancer as a result of ethylene oxide emissions from the Sterigenics Willowbrook plant. This was the first...
For the past few years, the European PFAS litigation has largely escaped being at the forefront of PFAS news articles, as the EU and member states' efforts to enact regulations and the U.S. PFAS litigation dominated the daily updates. Recently, however, PFAS...
Our prior reports discussed when an ethylene oxide case would go to verdict, and what the ensuing result would look like. We no longer need to speculate. On September 19, 2022, a Cook County (Illinois) jury awarded $363 million to a plaintiff who alleged that she...
On September 16, 2022, the presiding Judge in the MDL for PFAS AFFF issued a ruling denying defendants' motions to apply the government contractor defense to the MDL, which would have in effect wiped out a considerable number of cases on the MDL. The ruling brings to...
On May 24, 2022, the New York Assembly and Senate passed a bill, S.6291, that would ban the sale of any apparel in the state of New York that contain intentionally added PFAS starting on December 31, 2023. The New York fashion PFAS legislation, which must be signed...
In response to the presiding Judge's request that the parties in the PFAS AFFF MDL choose the order in which the first three cases chosen for trial in the MDL will proceed, the parties submitted a letter to the Judge informing him that the case of Stuart (FL) v. 3M,...
On September 9, 2022, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted interlocutory review of an enormously significant PFAS class action lawsuit filed in Ohio - Hardwick v. 3M. We previously wrote about the details of the Ohio court's decision to grant class certification...
On August 26, 2022, a PFAS consumer fraud class action lawsuit was filed in New York against Proctor & Gamble over alleged PFAS content in the Oral B brand of floss. The lawsuit is but the latest in a growing line of PFAS lawsuits that allege that certain consumer...
This week, California's Governor Newsom is expected to sign into law three major California PFAS bills, each of which will have significant impacts on businesses nationally and globally. Two of the bills would ban products from being sold in the state that contain...
On August 31, 2022, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released a report entitled "Implementing Instructions for Executive Order 14057 Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability." In the report, the CEQ strongly...