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August 18, 2026
NEW YORK — Primary and excess insurers have no duty to indemnify an insured for underlying personal injury suits seeking damages for exposure to ethylene oxide (EtO) emitted from the insured’s manufacturing facility because the policies’ pollution exclusion clearly bars coverage, a New York federal judge said in granting the insurers’ motion to dismiss.
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August 17, 2026
CHICAGO — An Illinois federal judge issued a warning that no more bellwether trials in multidistrict litigation filed against the manufacturers of infant formula that allegedly caused preterm infants to develop necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) will be held “absent assurances that the majority of fact witnesses will appear for live, in-person testimony” after learning just days before the first trial was set to commence that most of the witnesses would be “testifying via pre-recorded deposition designations.”
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August 14, 2026
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Consumers who sued Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. alleging that benzoyl peroxide (BPO) acne products contained or could degrade into benzene should be allowed to proceed with most of their claims, according to findings and recommendations issued Aug. 13 by a California federal magistrate judge, although he said the named plaintiffs lack standing to sue over products they did not purchase and that a “Walgreens Pharmacist Recommended” label is nonactionable puffery.
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August 14, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — A company that provides drinking water in the state of Delaware claims in a new suit that nine industrial companies released per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the Red Clay Creek and White Clay Creek watersheds, contaminating water entering its downstream treatment plant that required millions of dollars to be spent on new treatment equipment.
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August 14, 2026
RALEIGH, N.C. — The Plaintiffs’ Leadership Group (PLG) in the coordinated Camp Lejeune Water Litigation and the United States filed a joint status report in a federal court in North Carolina reporting the current total number of actions and discussing a recent acceptance of a $100,000 offer of judgment for a Track 1 plaintiff with multiple forms of cancer; the report was filed the same day the U.S. Department of Justice reported on its Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA) website that Camp Lejeune settlement offers exceed $1 billion and settlement payouts exceed $827 million.
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August 13, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A man who developed cancer after exposure to the active ingredient in Roundup waived his right to respond to a petition for a writ of certiorari filed in the U.S. Supreme Court by Monsanto Co. seeking a grant, vacate and remand (GVR) order of a California appellate panel’s decision to affirm a $28 million combined award against the herbicide manufacturer in light of the recent ruling in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell.
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August 13, 2026
PORTLAND, Ore. — One of several agricultural companies accused of contributing to the contamination of groundwater in the Lower Umatilla Basin in alleged violation of state law and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) has reached a $6.2 million settlement in a class action with a group of nearby residents that awaits approval by an Oregon federal judge.
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August 13, 2026
SEATTLE — In a response to a recently filed second amended putative class complaint brought by customers who contend that Amazon.com Inc. is liable for damages and fraudulent concealment in relation to rice that they bought that contained arsenic and other heavy metals, Amazon expressly denied the allegations and argued that it had no duty to disclose the presence of heavy metals in its rice products.
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August 13, 2026
NEW YORK — A New York federal judge partially granted summary judgment in favor of Pennsylvania gas station operators and owners in a long-running water contamination lawsuit related to methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) after determining that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is not permitted to seek damages for two categories of MTBE-contaminated sites because the future remediation costs related to those sites are speculative.
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August 13, 2026
ST. LOUIS — Six weeks after the suit was remanded, a Missouri state court judge granted a joint motion to continue a fairness hearing regarding a highly contested $7.25 billion nationwide Roundup settlement so that the parties may try to resolve “challenges to the validity or invalidity of opt out requests.”
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August 12, 2026
TRENTON, N.J. — Following years of litigation that “was vigorously contested at every stage by highly capable counsel,” a New Jersey federal judge approved a pair of judicial consent orders (JCOs) in which 3M and several DuPont-affiliated chemical companies agreed to pay up to $1.32 billion to settle claims related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and other types of contamination at four state industrial sites and statewide.
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August 12, 2026
SEATTLE — A plaintiff filed a class action complaint in a federal court in Washington, alleging that Amazon sells and markets Orgain Organic Protein Powder on its website as “high quality, clean, and nutritious” but failed to disclose to consumers the presence or risk of heavy metals in the product.
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August 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A company that imports and distributes marble and porcelain slabs for use in countertops filed a cross-complaint in California state court in which it denies responsibility for a toxic tort complaint brought against it and other companies by a stone cutter suffering from silicosis and brings claims for indemnity, apportionment and violation of California’s unfair competition law (UCL) against 100 unidentified parties who it says violated workplace safety rules.
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August 10, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California jury returned a verdict of more than $47 million for the family of a countertop fabricator in a case that’s one of hundreds of silicosis cases pending in California, many of which are coordinated in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
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August 06, 2026
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Following the lodging of a consent decree in a similar case, a West Virginia federal judge granted an environmental advocacy group’s motion and dismissed claims it filed against The Chemours Co. FC LLC over per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination from one of its plants into the Ohio River while allowing similar claims made by an intervening public utility that supplies water to residents in the area to remain active.
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August 06, 2026
TULSA, Okla. — A federal judge in Oklahoma dismissed a lawsuit filed by four American Airlines workers alleging that exposure to hazardous chemicals caused cancer and other significant health problems, holding that the workers’ claims were barred by Oklahoma’s Administrative Workers’ Compensation Act (AWCA) because they did not plausibly allege an intentional tort.
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August 03, 2026
BUTTE, Mont. — A federal judge in Montana denied without prejudice the third round of dismissal motions filed by companies accused of conspiring to conceal known dangers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in protective gear for firefighters in a second amended putative class complaint by various municipalities across the United States.
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August 03, 2026
ATLANTA — A trial court wrongly rejected 3M Co.’s alleged facts supporting removal of an Alabama town’s lawsuit over per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination of the Alabama River to federal court under the federal officer removal statute, an 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating the trial court’s remand order; however, the panel split 2-1 on the path to reach that decision.
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July 31, 2026
CHICAGO — A Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel reversed, in an interlocutory appeal, an Illinois federal judge’s ruling denying remand back to state court “a small subsection of several hundred similar cases” that are part of multidistrict litigation filed against the manufacturers of infant formula that allegedly caused preterm infants to develop necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), finding that the plaintiffs’ alleged lack of intent to pursue claims against a nondiverse defendant was “not an appropriate basis upon which to predicate a determination of fraudulent joinder.”
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July 31, 2026
CINCINNATI — More than 190 class members who opted into the personal injury payment portion of a settlement reached in a case over a chemical release that occurred after a train derailed in Ohio in February 2023 filed an appellant brief in the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, arguing that while the $600 million settlement doesn’t need to be reweighed, the trial court committed six legal errors when it denied their motions for relief from the personal injury payment releases after they discovered what they say is new evidence of fraud and misconduct by class counsel.
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July 30, 2026
ATLANTA — The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court in finding that general causation experts in related environmental contamination cases did not reliably apply their methodologies in concluding that toxic waste caused various neurological conditions and affirmed the experts’ exclusion and the summary judgment in two cases that were consolidated on appeal.
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July 30, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A Missouri federal judge denied Monsanto Co.’s motion to remand to Missouri state court the lawsuit it brought seeking indemnification for litigation related to alleged injuries from exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), agreeing with General Electric Co. (GE) and other defendant entities that they acted under federal direction and that federal officer removal jurisdiction applies.
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July 30, 2026
CINCINNATI — No coverage is afforded for an underlying water contamination suit filed against an insured because coverage is barred by the pollution exclusions included in primary and excess insurance policies, the insurers maintain in a suit filed in Ohio federal court.
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July 30, 2026
ORLANDO, Fla. — A federal judge in Florida issued an omnibus order explaining and memorializing three rulings made during a jury trial that ended in a verdict for Lockheed Martin Corp. on claims that contaminants from an Orlando facility resulted in three children’s birth defects and developmental delays.
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July 29, 2026
CHICAGO — A woman who alleges that her infant daughter developed necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) after consuming cow’s milk-based-infant formula (CMBF) manufactured by Abbott Laboratories Inc. before dying did not show that an alternative warning label would have prevented her child’s death, the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held in affirming a grant of summary judgment for the manufacturer in the first bellwether case in multidistrict litigation pending in Illinois.