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August 27, 2026
OXFORD, Miss. — Three complaints accusing companies associated with a facility in Water Valley, Miss., of “poisoning the people, environment, and the community” with trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors are the most recent to be removed to a federal court in Mississippi by defendants who allege diversity jurisdiction.
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August 26, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court denied review of an appellate ruling that reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that a Monsanto pesticide caused a woman’s breast cancer, letting stand a decision that the trial court erred in dismissing the lawsuit for delay in prosecution after the plaintiffs made a minimal showing that the delay was excusable.
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August 26, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A divided Louisiana appellate panel reversed a trial court’s judgment awarding $407,000 to 12 former city employees who alleged that they were sickened by a 1999 leak of toxic acid fumes from drums in the basement of a property that formerly belonged to Pan-American Life Insurance Co. and said the trial court erred by denying its motion for summary judgment on prior owner liability, while two judges dissented.
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August 25, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in Louisiana dismissed a lawsuit by a seaman who alleged that he suffered from pulmonological and neurological injuries after being exposed to toxic fumes aboard a vessel after the parties stated that they reached a confidential settlement.
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August 24, 2026
LOS ANGELES — A California jury returned a $7.1 million verdict for the family of a man who died at age 46 from silicosis after being exposed to silica through his work as a countertop fabricator, although the jury allocated only 3% of the fault to the defendants that remained at trial.
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August 24, 2026
BATON ROUGE, La. — A Louisiana appeals court panel vacated judgment in a groundwater contamination lawsuit filed by a group of individuals and businesses that own property near the former Dresser Industrial Valve Operations Facility in Rapides Parish, La., that required the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) to direct responsible parties to submit a plan addressing the alleged pollution, holding that the plaintiffs improperly sought declaratory relief through a summary proceeding and that the trial court imposed an unrequested mandatory injunction without an evidentiary hearing.
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August 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL) agreed to centralize in a Minnesota federal court cases alleging that specialized personal protective equipment used by firefighters contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that are alleged to be toxic and harmful to both firefighters and the environment, rejecting calls from certain plaintiffs and defendants to add their cases to an MDL involving claims related to the firefighting agent aqueous film forming foam (AFFF).
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August 21, 2026
NEW YORK — Two New York mothers who allege in a putative class action that they unknowingly purchased infant formula that contained heavy metals can pursue fraud and state consumer protection claims against Mead Johnson & Company LLC after showing that the company “sought to capitalize on the mistaken beliefs of reasonable consumers about the health and quality” of the formula, a federal judge in New York said, but the judge ruled that their unjust enrichment claim should be dismissed as duplicative of their other claims.
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August 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “adequately considered and reasonably explained” a decision to uphold a final rule adding two widely used per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to the list of hazardous substances covered by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, a District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel denied five consolidated petitions filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and six trade associations seeking to overturn the designation due to various alleged errors.
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August 20, 2026
ATLANTA — After considering two questions certified from a federal court in Georgia, the Georgia Supreme Court determined that exposure to a toxic substance without a present physical injury does not foreclose equitable relief, which instead turns on whether the plaintiff suffered any “legally cognizable injury” and the absence of an adequate remedy at law; however, the state high court did not rule on how this principle applied to the underlying conflict involving a toxic plume released from a chemical plant.
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August 19, 2026
NEWARK, N.J. — A New Jersey federal magistrate judge on Aug. 18 stayed and bifurcated a bad faith claim from a breach of contract claim for the purposes of discovery and trial in a coverage dispute over environmental contamination cleanup costs after determining that adjudication of the two claims will require different witnesses and different documentary proof.
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August 19, 2026
WORCESTER, Mass. — Nearly two years after granting a consumer healthcare products manufacturer’s motion to dismiss Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and state statutory and tort law claims brought by a group of residents over contaminated groundwater, a Massachusetts federal judge issued a memorandum and order explaining the decision on the RCRA claims, with reference to a case decided during the delay, while modifying the decision on the state law claims to dismiss them without prejudice.
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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.