In re E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. C-8 Personal Injury Litig.

316 F. Supp. 3d 1021
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedMay 20, 2015
DocketCivil Action 2:13-md-2433
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 316 F. Supp. 3d 1021 (In re E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. C-8 Personal Injury Litig.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. C-8 Personal Injury Litig., 316 F. Supp. 3d 1021 (S.D. Ohio 2015).

Opinion

EDMUND A. SARGUS, JR., CHIEF UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Choice of Law

In this case, the parties dispute which state law applies to their claims. The plant *1024that discharged the water contaminated with ammonium perfluorooctanoate ("C-8") is in West Virginia. Some of the plaintiffs reside in Ohio and some in West Virginia. Additionally, some of the plaintiffs have filed suit in the state in which they do not reside.

The issue of which state law will be applied to the individual plaintiffs' claims that make up this MDL was initially brought before the Court in Plaintiffs' First Motion for Summary Judgment. (ECF No. 820.) In that motion, the plaintiffs requested that the Court apply the law of the state of West Virginia to all of the plaintiffs' who make such election. The defendant, however, argued that it is the law of the state in which the injury occurred that must be applied. The parties also discussed the issue at the oral argument on November 13, 2014. (ECF No. 1519.) The Court ordered simultaneous supplemental briefing on the issue in Pretrial Order No. 31. (ECF No. 2032.) The parties timely filed their briefs. (ECF Nos. 2284, 2285, 2416, 2417.) On May 6, 2015, the Court held oral argument on this issue. (ECF No. 3235.) For the reasons set forth below, the Court DENIES the portion of Plaintiffs' First Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 820) related to the choice of law request.

I.

On August 31, 2001, a group of individuals filed a state court action in West Virginia against E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company ("DuPont") captioned Leach v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. , No. 01-C-698 (Wood County W. Va. Cir. Ct.) ("Leach Case"). The plaintiffs in the Leach Case brought a variety of claims under West Virginia common law tort theories for equitable, injunctive and declaratory relief, along with compensatory and punitive damages, as a result of alleged drinking water contamination.

On April 10, 2002, the West Virginia trial court ("Leach Court") granted the plaintiffs' motion for class certification and certified a mandatory, non-opt-out class ("Leach Class")

on behalf of a class of all persons whose drinking water is or has been contaminated with ammonium perfluorooctanoate (a/k/a/ "C-8") attributable to releases from DuPont's Washington Works plant (hereinafter "the Class") with respect to all issues relating to [DuPont's] underlying liability and Plaintiffs' claims for equitable, injunctive, and declaratory relief, including liability for punitive damages; all damage issues involving any determination of individual harm of the Class members and the amount of any punitive damages are hereby STAYED and RESERVED for later litigation ....

Leach v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. , No. 01-C-608, 2002 WL 1270121, at *1 (W. Va. Cir. Ct. Apr. 10, 2002). The Class included approximately 80,000 individual residents of the communities served by certain public water districts and private water sources that had allegedly been contaminated with C-8 discharged from DuPont's Washington Works plant. The water districts and private water sources were all in either Ohio or West Virginia.

In November 2004, the parties entered into a class-wide settlement of the Leach Case ("Leach Settlement Agreement"). On February 28, 2005, following appropriate class-wide notice, objection opportunities, full opt-out opportunities, and a final fairness hearing, the Leach Court entered an order approving the Leach Settlement Agreement and entering final judgment in the action. The Leach Settlement Agreement provides for a process by which a determination would be made as to which individual class members, if any, would be permitted to file personal injury and *1025wrongful death actions, referred to as "Conditionally Releases Claims," in the "later litigation" against DuPont based on any of the human diseases they believed had been caused by exposure to C-8. (Leach Settlement Agreement "SA" § 3.3; ECF No. 820-8.) Pursuant to this procedure, a Science Panel was tasked to issue either Probable Link Findings or No Probable Link Findings for human diseases the Leach Class alleged were caused by C-8. The class members agreed "not to file any action or proceedings against [DuPont] based on the Conditionally Released Claims unless and until the Science Panel delivers a Probable Link Finding ... with respect to the specific Human Disease at issue in the Conditionally Released Claim." Id.

In 2011 and 2012, the Science Panel delivered Probable Link Findings for six human diseases ("Linked Diseases"). Subsequently, the individual class members whose claims are based on one or more of the Linked Diseases began to file their Conditionally Released Claims in actions in West Virginia and in Ohio. Some of the plaintiffs lived in Ohio and were allegedly injured in Ohio when they drank the water contaminated with C-8 in Ohio ("Ohio Plaintiffs"), and some of the plaintiffs were allegedly injured in West Virginia when they drank C-8 contaminated water in West Virginia ("West Virginia Plaintiffs"). Some Ohio Plaintiffs filed their cases in Ohio alleging claims under Ohio law and some Ohio Plaintiffs filed their cases in West Virginia alleging their claims under West Virginia law.

DuPont moved the United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation for centralization of these individual actions pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1407. The Judicial Panel granted DuPont's request. On April 9, 2013, the Judicial Panel transferred the centralized action to this Court. In the Transfer Order the Judicial Panel described the individual cases that make up this multidistrict litigation ("MDL") as follows:

All the actions are personal injury or wrongful death actions arising out of plaintiffs' alleged ingestion of drinking water contaminated with a chemical, C-8 (also known as perfluorooctoanoic acid (PFOA) or ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO)), discharged from DuPont's Washington Works Plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia. All of the plaintiffs in this litigation allege that they suffer or suffered from one or more of six diseases identified as potentially linked to C-8 exposure by a study conducted as part of a 2005 settlement between DuPont and a class of approximately 80,000 persons residing in six water districts allegedly contaminated by C-8 from the Washington Works Plant [ ("Leach Settlement Agreement") ]. See Leach v. E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. , No. 01-C-608 (W. Va. Cir. Ct.).

(Transfer Order; ECF No. 1 at 1.) Currently there are approximately 2,500 individual cases in this MDL and the first trial is scheduled to be held in September 2015.

II.

Reviewing all of the briefing and arguments that have been made to the Court (ECF Nos.

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Bluebook (online)
316 F. Supp. 3d 1021, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-ei-du-pont-de-nemours-co-c-8-personal-injury-litig-ohsd-2015.