ALBANY (LN) — A federal judge in the Northern District of New York on Tuesday granted final approval to a multi-class settlement resolving nearly a decade of PFOA contamination litigation against E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, awarding class counsel $5,373,000 in fees and $1,018,668.29 in expenses while closing out claims brought by property owners and medical monitoring participants who alleged the chemical giant fouled their community.
U.S. District Judge Mae A. D'Agostino found the settlement fair, reasonable, and adequate under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e), applying the Second Circuit's Grinnell factors and noting that the deal drew no objections and no opt-out requests from any of the three settlement classes.
The settlement resolves claims brought by named plaintiffs Michele Baker, Charles Carr, Angela Corbett, Pamela Forrest, Michael Hickey, Kathleen Main-Lingener, Kristin Miller, Jennifer Plouffe, Silvia Potter, and Daniel Schuttig, on behalf of property owners and individuals enrolled in a medical monitoring program tied to PFOA exposure.
The case, filed in 2016, survived settlements with three other defendants before plaintiffs pressed on against DuPont alone, obtaining class certification, completing merits discovery that included six expert reports, sixteen expert depositions, and seven fact and Rule 30(b)(6) depositions, and reaching the eve of trial before the parties reached terms.
Combined with a 2021 class settlement in the same litigation, the deal yields a total recovery for property class members exceeding 90% of the maximum diminution-in-value damages likely to be proven at trial, according to plaintiffs' expert real estate economist Dr. Jeffrey Zabel. Property class members will receive payments calculated against 2015 county tax assessments, while medical monitoring class members gain additional program funding and the prospect of pro rata distributions of any remaining funds at the program's conclusion.
D'Agostino approved the 19.9 percent fee award — below the 33 percent benchmark courts in this circuit have regularly found to be fair and within the range of reasonableness — noting that class counsel logged 5,564.64 hours for a lodestar of $3,955,256, producing a multiplier of 1.36 that falls at the low end of the range of multipliers typically awarded in this circuit. She also approved $25,000 service awards to each of the ten named class representative plaintiffs.
The court ordered the class administrator to review for eligibility any medical monitoring claims filed on or before February 11, 2016 that lacked blood test documentation at the time of filing, provided claimants submit that evidence by October 26, 2026.
More than 4,000 claims were submitted during the enrollment period, with class counsel conservatively estimating that over 50% of eligible class members filed — a participation rate D'Agostino described as a testament to the fairness of the settlement and the relative ease with which claimants were able to file a claim.