2BInformed: The Future of Fluoride in Drinking Water, the New TSCA Fees Rule, and the Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List 5
DynCorp's 'Strategic' Defense In Drug Crop Spraying Suit
On July 9, 2025, in Hammond Power Solutions Inc. v. National Union Fire Insurance Co., the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision granting summary judgment to the insurer and finding, under...more
Monsanto has recently settled with families who claimed they were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at a school near Seattle, ending what had become one of the most closely watched toxic tort cases in recent memory....more
Jurisdiction: Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit - Mr. May died from Mesothelioma and the plaintiffs filed a wrongful death and survival action alleging the decedent was exposed to asbestos while working as a...more
Jurisdiction: Court of Appeal of California, Second Appellate District, Division Six - Plaintiff Easterling brought this claim based on his diagnosis of lung cancer, which he attributes to asbestos exposure during his work as...more
Plaintiffs in toxic tort cases must prove both general and specific causation, generally through the testimony of experts. Experts must establish that a specific chemical exposure can (and did) cause the specific injury at...more
Court: Appellate Court of Maryland - A Maryland appellate court has affirmed a lower court’s decision that granted summary judgment to the defense in a toxic substance exposure case....more
Maffei v. A.O. Smith Water Prods. Co. (In re N.Y.C. Asbestos Litigation), 2025 N.Y. Slip Op. 1425 (N.Y. App. Div. 2025) - Valuing asbestos cases can sometimes be complicated but on March 13th, 2025, the NY Appellate Court...more
Jurisdiction: Illinois Circuit Court – Cook County - This lawsuit involved a survival and wrongful death action brought under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) in Illinois. Plaintiff, Annette Sanders, represented...more
The Texas Fourteenth Court of Appeals upheld summary judgment for Exxon Mobil corporation in Stanley Cole v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (No. 14-22-00756-CV), a premises liability case involving alleged exposure to olivine dust. The...more
In a toxic tort case, plaintiffs must establish general causation. If a substance is incapable of causing the type of injury plaintiff claims, then it certainly didn’t cause theirs. Under Texas law, toxic tort plaintiffs must...more
Court: Court of Appeal of California, First Appellate District, Division Two - Plaintiff Steven Watts filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Alameda County, California naming 36 defendants who were alleged to have...more
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit - Plaintiff Harry Marsh worked as a merchant mariner from 1944 to 1992. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma in 2018 and subsequently sued the owner of every vessel he...more
The recent decision by the Sixth Circuit in Hardwick and a review of the law from various jurisdictions supports the challenges that Plaintiffs face in proving standing for class certification in PFAS lawsuits. Late in 2023,...more
Foley Hoag LLP publishes this quarterly Update primarily concerning developments in product liability and related law from federal and state courts applicable to Massachusetts, but also featuring selected developments for New...more
Jurisdiction: Supreme Court of New York, New York County - In this matter, Rockwell Automation, Inc. sought to dismiss the action against them on grounds that the plaintiff was not exposed to asbestos from burners...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently approved injunctive relief as part of a strategy for settling mass tort claims through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of Bestwall LLC, an entity created by...more
As previously reported in the Asbestos Case Tracker here, in June 2022 a jury awarded plaintiff Munir Seen $15 million, allocating 70 percent of the fault to joint compound manufacturer Kaiser Gypsum. Following the trial,...more
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit - In 2016, plaintiff Richard Nybeck sued various product manufacturers in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, alleging he developed lung cancer after...more
On September 1, 2021, the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the circuit court’s verdict and additur in favor of Plaintiffs in the matter of Beverly Dale Jolly and Brenda Rice Jolly v. Gen. Elec. Co., et al. Fisher...more
Recently, KCIC posted their 2022 Mid-Year Asbestos Filings Update. This update is compiled using information collected through July 31st. This article illustrates some highlights from the update....more
A California state appeals court affirmed a bong maker’s win in a suit alleging it violated California’s Proposition 65 (Prop. 65) by failing to warn consumers that its products expose them to marijuana smoke that could cause...more
New York’s Appellate Division, First Department affirmed a decision of the Bronx County Supreme Court, which precluded plaintiff’s expert evidence submitted in opposition to a summary judgment motion and following a Frye...more
The Illinois Court of Appeals (Second District) (“Court”) addressed in a March 4th Opinion an insurance coverage question involving a medical instrument sterilization facility (“Medline”). See Ill. Un. Ins. Co. v. Medline...more
In our last issue we covered the expansive class certification in the Hardwick v. 3M Co. case pending in the Southern District of Ohio. As we noted at the time, Rule 23(f) permits an immediate appeal without waiting for a...more
A California appeals court permitted a Los Angeles County wrongful death lawsuit for COVID-19 “take-home” liability to proceed. The plaintiff claims that plaintiff’s employer’s negligence resulted in plaintiff’s transmitting...more