The Ray Group and Mass Tort Medical Consultants will hold PFAS Summit V

Many of the firms that attended PFAS 1-4 have already created their PFAS litigation plans and strategies and are far ahead of the pack in the largest litigation in history. There is still time for your firm to catch up but failing to avail yourself of the opportunity just doesn’t make sense.

Our Summits are not designed to give you just enough information to aggregate cases and refer them out. Instead, we give you everything you need to know to decide which strategy if best for your firm in each case or group of PFAS cases. We hold nothing back because research and education is our primary business.

You do not want to miss PFAS SUMMIT V, so register and book your hotel room today!

Where: The Riverside Hotel in Fort Lauderdale
When: Friday March 21st – Sunday March 23rd 

Register and get your room today while there is still time:

Register: Ray Group - Mass Tort Success

Book your room: Riverside Hotel - Fort Lauderdale (travelclick.com) 

IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP

Despite the fact that numerous PFAS personal injury settlements have already been reached (though a drop in the overall bucket) beginning with the $670,000,000 for 3,550 injury plaintiffs in the C8 litigation (which now appears to have resulted in payouts far north of that number) as well as the recent AFFF settlement with Cape Fear injury plaintiffs in AFFF as well as others in between these, most Plaintiff lawyers are still on hold waiting for something to happen.

IT IS HAPPENING, YOU JUST ARE NOT PART OF IT!

If your plaintiffs’ firms continue to ignore or wait to get involved in the largest litigation in history, you will only have to blame yourself when your peers and competitors help the victims, reap the rewards, and then use their winnings to dominate your personal injury market. (asbestos redux)

Insurance actuaries expect PFAS the cost of remediation and response, which will be borne by insurance carriers, to exceed $400 billion dollars and possibly more than $1 trillion dollars. This would only include claims covered by insurance and does not consider personal bodily injury claims.

DEFENSE PREPARATION

Notable insurance industry authorities, such as Predicat and Millman, continue to increase their estimates of potential insurance carrier loss related to these claims and suggest that carriers take large reserves to pay for the future claims that are sure to come.

Major corporate defense firms have dedicated websites related to PFAS litigation. Defense firms such as Alston & Bird have robust online presence messaging to their potential clients in a consistent way. The defense bar messaging does not sound in “hire us” we can win the case, it sounds in “hire us, we may get you through this intact and obtain a favorable settlement”.

As the Federal and State governments continue to take actions favorable to Plaintiffs in these cases, Wall Street analysts are undertaking in-depth analyses to determine which stocks their clients should sell or are short of concern over PFAS liability litigation.

Everyone in the legal and financial sphere seems to realize that PFAS litigation will be the largest mass litigation in history, but many in the Plaintiffs bar have yet to wake up and pay attention.

The fact that PFAS litigation settlements are already poised to exceed $20 billion, just a drop in this very large bucket, also does not seem to have sunk into many in the plaintiff’s bar.

When insurance carriers are setting aside massive amounts of money to pay claims that have not been filed, one would think the Plaintiffs bar would oblige them and file the claims.

PFAS & AFFF – IT IS NOT ALL THE SAME

Many Plaintiff lawyers still think PFAS is all about AFFF, when nothing could be further from the truth.

All the PFAS produced and released into the environment (by all AFFF sources) in a decade would amount to less than what one paper mill; a major textile factory or metal plating facility might release in a single year. This is not to say that AFFF cannot be a significant source of contamination in areas where it was routinely used, but it was not used at all in many areas simply because the coverage territories of many fire departments.

Additionally, many in the Plaintiffs bar believe all public water system claims were resolved in the AFFF public water system settlement. Again, this is not remotely the case. The AFFF settling defendants settled with major public water systems that tested PFAS positive in the UCMR 5 testing cycle. This accounts for less than 8% of approximately 156,000 PWS and none of the millions of privately owned wells in the country.

Moving forward, PFAS remediation and response costs, relevant to public water systems will arise under CERCLA, whether they are filed in the AFFF MDL or elsewhere. There are at least 130,000 PWS currently unrepresented and millions of private well owners in need of bringing claims under 107(a), and the plaintiffs’ lawyers who should be letting them know have yet to wake up to the largest, most significant, and socially impactful litigation in history.

It made sense for the defendants to settle with the UCMR 5 PFAS positive public water systems, as these cases were more quickly filed in the AFFF litigation and would be closer to trial than cases in which the Federal government has yet to test the water supply.

THE FUTURE OF PFAS CLAIMS

Moving forward, PFAS litigation will not center around design defect theories, as is the case in the AFFF litigation. The defendants in regional PFAS litigation will be those facilities that discharged PFAS into rivers and aquifers from which public water providers draw water and in turn exposed their customers to the defendants PFAS when the PFAS survives water treatment (which is always does) and makes it to homes causing injury to those exposed.

The legal theories in PFAS cases going forward will sound in battery, negligence of a variety of species, and other legal theories with far less complexity than product liability/design defect theories.

YOU NEED A PFAS STRATEGY

There are multiple tracks to choose from in PFAS litigation, your firm can choose to focus solely on personal injury cases, deceptive marketing class actions, or CERCAL remediation and response cases. In some situations, the clients for one case type will also be clients for the other case types, so you will need an “across the board” complete education on all things PFAS.

COME AND GET IT