More PFOA Lawsuits Scheduled For 2017

The judge overseeing the contaminated drinking water class-action lawsuit against DuPont and its successor Chemours says he will schedule 40 individual trials a year beginning in April 2017. The trials, drawn from 3,500 suits consolidated in Columbus, Ohio, federal court, will focus on plaintiffs who claim they got cancer from exposure to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) that leaked into wells near the firm’s Parkersburg, W.Va., plant. The move puts pressure on defendants and plaintiffs to come to terms. DuPont used PFOA as processing aid to make fluoropolymers but phased it out after 2006. In October 2015, a federal jury awarded a defendant with kidney cancer $1.6 million in the first of six bellwether trials intended to determine the firms’ liability.