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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.
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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.”