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April 28, 2026
By Tony Cole
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May 01, 2026
SAN JOSE, Calif. — In an unpublished opinion, an appellate court panel in California affirmed a verdict in favor of Monsanto Co. in a lawsuit alleging that exposure to the herbicide Roundup caused a man to develop cancer, ruling that to the extent the trial court did not limit Monsanto’s use of a separate-but-related lawsuit in questioning at trial, the plaintiff forfeited his objection to that line of questioning by not raising that specific issue at trial.
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April 30, 2026
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal magistrate judge in Connecticut has approved a modified protective order outlining broad topics related to the handling of confidential information and the use of generative AI in discovery in an injury lawsuit related to exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances(PFAS) brought by firefighters, firefighter unions and parties that purchased gear for firefighters against the makers of PFAS. Among other things, the order establishes that confidential material that is uploaded into a generative AI tool should not be hosted on public cloud servers or used to train public AI models.
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April 30, 2026
WILMINGTON, N.C. — A federal judge in North Carolina has partially granted and partially denied a motion by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. and two affiliates to exclude a plaintiffs’ expert in a consolidated class action alleging injuries from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), finding that she is unqualified to offer some of her opinions but rejecting the defendants’ argument that all of her opinions related to air and water modeling should be excluded.
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April 30, 2026
HONOLULU — A federal judge in Hawaii has adopted a magistrate judge’s report that recommended approving settlements for 119 minor plaintiffs, for a combined gross total of $1,588,000, for injuries to plaintiffs in two of three consolidated cases stemming from groundwater contamination following a jet fuel spill at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. The actual net settlement amounts for each plaintiff will be reduced by the cost of attorney fees and Hawaii state excise tax.
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April 29, 2026
BALTIMORE — A federal judge in Maryland granted the 3M Co.’s motion to stay the state’s lawsuit for injuries related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) pending a decision by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL) on 3M’s motion to transfer the case to the MDL for litigation pertaining to the firefighting agent aqueous film forming foam (AFFF). The judge said 3M would be prejudiced absent a stay because it could face inconsistent rulings on remand issues in the MDL court.
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April 28, 2026
LOS ANGELES — An insurer maintains that reconsideration of a California federal judge’s finding that the insurer has a duty to defend its insured for underlying silica bodily injury suits is necessary because the judge failed to consider the total pollution exclusion in the insurer’s policies under the most recent and applicable California authority.
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April 28, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Attorneys presented oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 27 debating the question of whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts label-based state failure-to-warn claims in situations where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not required a warning. The question arose in litigation related the herbicide Roundup.
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April 27, 2026
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A state court judge in Missouri on April 26 issued an order stating that judgments for punitive damages and for damages based on a failure-to-warn claim in consolidated litigation over injuries allegedly caused by exposure to the herbicide Roundup are not yet final, and recovery of the awards is stayed in light of a pending petition in the U.S. Supreme Court that challenges the ruling that led to a combined $549.9 million punitive damages award.
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April 27, 2026
WILMINGTON, Del. — W.L. Gore & Associates Inc. has filed a brief in Delaware federal court arguing that it should dismiss a putative class action alleging “deceptive, misleading, and unfair conduct” related to the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in its outdoor clothing because the plaintiffs do not allege a cognizable injury.
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April 22, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Union Carbide Corp. and an affiliate on April 21 filed a reply brief in support of their petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that it should review a Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals opinion pertaining to the correct legal standard for the admissibility of an expert in an ethylene oxide (EtO) injury case because the appellate court “continues to apply the toothless standard for admitting expert testimony that Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was amended in 2023 to repudiate.”
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April 21, 2026
NEW ORLEANS — As the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals prepares to hear en banc oral argument regarding a divided ruling in the water contamination lawsuit affecting the city of Jackson, Miss., the city and its officials filed a supplemental brief arguing that even if their conduct was “conscience-shocking,” the residents’ substantive due process claim “still fails because the right at issue — freedom from allegedly deficient public pronouncements about imperfect government services — cannot be found in established bodily integrity jurisprudence.”
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April 21, 2026
DOVER, Del. — An insurer failed to show that an interlocutory appeal of a Delaware judge’s ruling that a pollution exclusion applies only to traditional environmental pollution claims is warranted, a panel of the Delaware Supreme Court said April 20 in affirming the lower court’s denial of the insurer’s motion to certify the lower court’s ruling for interlocutory appeal.
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April 20, 2026
BURLINGTON, Vt. — A federal judge in Vermont has denied Monsanto Co.’s motion for summary judgment dismissing the Burlington School District’s (BSD) lawsuit alleging the company is liable for contaminating Burlington High School (BHS) with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), ruling that “Monsanto knew that PCBs were toxic and that they caused harm to humans and animals.”
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April 20, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Monsanto Co. on April 17 filed a reply brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in its merits case over whether the federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts label-based state failure-to-warn claims in situations where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not required a warning, arguing that “while Congress preserved a role for states, that role did not extend to safety warnings on the label.”
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April 20, 2026
CHARLESTON, S.C. — The federal judge in South Carolina presiding over the multidistrict litigation for claims related to the firefighting agent aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) has denied a motion to remand a lawsuit filed by Wausau, Wis., against paper mills and other industrial facilities for alleged contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), ruling that the city’s motion “completely ignores the logic” of the transfer order issued by the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPMDL or JPML).
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April 17, 2026
LOS ANGELES — Reconsideration of a California federal judge’s finding that an insurer has a duty to defend its insured for underlying silica bodily injury suits is not warranted because the insurer repeats the same arguments presented in its summary judgment briefing and already rejected by the court, the insured maintains in response to the insurer’s motion.
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April 17, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oil companies’ well drilling activities in Louisiana during World War II sufficiently relate to government contracts involving the production of aviation gasoline and trigger federal jurisdiction under 2011 amendments to the federal officer removal statute, the U.S. Supreme Court said April 17.
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April 16, 2026
BISMARCK, N.D. — A man with cancer has sued Monsanto Co. in North Dakota federal court seeking damages as a result of the company’s “negligent and wrongful conduct” related to manufacturing and selling the herbicide Roundup, which contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which he contends is “defective, dangerous to human health, unfit and unsuitable to be marketed and sold.”
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April 16, 2026
PHILADELPHIA — A Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel has issued a nonprecedential per curiam opinion saying “we discern no error” in a lower court’s judgment that a man’s lawsuit against Monsanto Co. alleging that he developed cancer from exposure to glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, was barred by the statute of repose in the Indiana Products Liability Act (IPLA).
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April 16, 2026
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A federal judge in Kansas has ruled that some claims in one of the cases that constitute a consolidated putative class action related to toxic chemical exposure are barred by a 10-year statute of repose but said that other plaintiffs have sufficiently pleaded causation by alleging that the defendant leaked high levels of ethylene oxide (EtO) and other chemicals into the environment.
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April 15, 2026
ST. LOUIS — A federal judge in Missouri has remanded to state court an injury lawsuit against 3M Co. for exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in protective gear worn by firefighters, ruling that in light of the plaintiffs’ disclaimer of any potential claims arising out of exposure to the firefighting agent known as aqueous film forming foam (AFFF), federal jurisdiction is lacking.
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April 15, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO — A putative class has filed a second amended complaint in California federal court against Apple Inc., alleging that its smartwatch bands contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), adding proposed subclasses and striking some claims.
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April 14, 2026
BALTIMORE — The owner of a broadcasting tower and a painting company have agreed to pay $2.2 million in penalties to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) for lead-based paint contamination of soil and water that occurred when the painting company performed lead paint abatement work on the broadcasting tower and did not properly contain the hazardous waste. The MDE also penalized the broadcasting tower for hiring a painting company that was not accredited and authorized to perform lead-paint abatement services in the state.
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April 14, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former EPA employees have filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that “the fact that EPA approved labeling without a cancer warning cannot be understood as an implicit rejection of such a warning and does not preempt” a label-based failure-to-warn claim under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) regarding the herbicide Roundup, in a case slated for oral argument on April 27.