All of this is the result of a class action lawsuit filed in Wood County Circuit Court against DuPont in 2002 over the contamination of several Mid-Ohio Valley water supplies, which resulted from manufacturing processes at DuPont Washington Works near Parkersburg, West Virginia. The case brought to light the family of hightly fluorinated chemicals we now call PFAS - thousands of manmade industrial solvents. C8 is DuPont's trade name for the substance they used in the manufacture of Teflon and other consumer applications at Washington Works since the 1950s. C8 refers to its durable 8 carbon chain. The family of forever chemicals were developed to be indestructible for the Manhattan Project.
The members of the class in the Wood County case are those individuals who lived or worked in one of the contaminated areas and drank the water for at least a year prior to 2004.
The groundbreaking lawsuit was determined not by the courts, but by a court approved method of scientific discovery proposed by the attorneys for the class. The C8 Health Project collected the blood and medical histories of nearly 70,000 Mid-Ohio Valley residents who had been exposed through their contaminated drinking water. The information gathered was studied by three epidemiologists - the C8 Science Panel - who assessed the data together with the information discovered in other scientific studies around the globe and determined that for this population there was a probable link between six human health conditions and C8 exposure. The conditions included: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, pre-eclampsia, and medically diagnosed high cholesterol.
DuPont agreed to build and maintain water treatment facilities for the six impacted communities named in the suit. They are: Little Hocking, Belpre, Pomeroy, Tuppers Plains-Chester in Ohio and Lubeck and Mason County, West Virginia. As a condition of the settlement agreement, DuPont would remain responsible for the maintenance of these water filtration systems if C8 exposure could be linked to human disease. It was.
Further, based on the findings of the C8 Science Panel, eligible class members who developed the linked human health conditions could file personal injury claims against DuPont. The bulk of those, 3,5oo cases, were settled with the 2017 agreement.
However, there is an expectation that individuals who live here will continue to be diagnosed with the conditions because they have been exposed for decades - and are being exposed still. The C8 Medical Monitoring Program was also provided for in the class action settlement, which means that class members are entitled to medical screenings regarding the linked health conditions. And, people who are diagnosed with one or more of the linked human health conditions have two years from the date of their diagnosis to file a personal injury claim against DuPont.
In order to provide for these personal injury claims, in the 2017 settlement agreement DuPont and Chemours both agreed to share the financial responsibility and set aside funds. Now these future liabilities have become a source of contention between DuPont and the spin-off company that was designed to handle the escalating global crisis and liabilities associated with PFAS exposure.
Newly released court documents reveal Chemours claims its parent company systematically underestimated the cost of handling environmental problems resulting from PFAS contamination not only in the Mid-Ohio Valley, but also in places like New Jersey and North Carolina. There is mounting pressure from other states, as well, as communities all over the country become aware of their own exposure problems.
While Chemours claims DuPont low-balled estimates of future liabilities, DuPont claims the company acted within its legal rights in creating Chemours and claims it did so with the DuPont stockholders' best interests in mind. In a motion to dismiss, DuPont contends Chemours must solve this dispute in private arbitration rather than the courts.
Until yesterday, DuPont successfully kept the court documents sealed.
In 2017, DuPont and Chemours jointly agreed to pay $250 million for future settlement claims involving class members in the Mid-Ohio Valley over the next five years - or from 2018 to 2022. Chemours alleges DuPont isn't paying their share and is asking that DuPont be made responsible for all of the historical liabilities that have exceeded the certified cost expectations.
Column by Callie Lyons
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