The total dollar value of class action and mass tort settlements dropped in 2024 but continued to surpass $40 billion for the third year in a row, according to the Duane Morris Class Action Review 2025.

PFAS generated the largest class action settlement in 2024: 3M’s deal worth at least $10.3 billion to thousands of public drinking water providers. The settlement, as well as three other PFAS deals last year with DuPont, Tyco and BASF, which collectively totaled more than $2.25 billion, was part of the multidistrict litigation focused on aqueous film-forming foam used in firefighting.

Paul Napoli, of Napoli Shkolnik in Santurce, Puerto Rico, said the 3M settlement was “just scratching the surface.”

“PFAS cases are here for a long time,” he said. “While the water providers have been resolved, there are still airports, water treatment facilities, and other municipal properties such as fire hazards. The U.S. government has significant liability for the 700 military sites it’s contaminated.”

Paul Napoli, co-lead class counsel in the report’s largest settlement of 2024, the PFAS agreement with 3M, gave a different answer to the trend: the dollars jumped two years ago as companies reemerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I did notice during COVID our settlements went up sharply, and I think part of that was because companies were looking to increase their bottom line and fix their balance sheets by removing some pendant liabilities, and a lot of those liabilities were lawsuits,” Napoli said. “So using the cash, they had to settle cases.”

Read the Law.com | ALM article here.