Columbus Jury Hits DuPont With $50 Million in C-8 Cancer Case

For decades, DuPont released C-8, also called PFOA, from its Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia. The chemical went into the air, the soil, and the Ohio River. C-8 is a "forever chemical" that does not break down and builds up in the human body. Tens of thousands of people in the mid-Ohio River Valley drank water laced with it.

Travis Abbott lived in Pomeroy, Ohio, across the river from the plant. He drank the contaminated water for roughly 20 years. He developed testicular cancer twice, the disease spread, and he went through multiple surgeries. His wife, Julie Abbott, brought a claim of her own for what the family lost.

The Abbotts' case went to trial in early 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Columbus, part of the multidistrict litigation known as the C-8 Personal Injury Litigation (MDL 2433). Cory Watson attorneys Jon Conlin and F. Jerome Tapley represented the couple, with Nina Towle Herring also on the trial team. Three earlier bellwether trials had already resolved core questions, so the court held that DuPont could not relitigate whether it owed a duty, breached that duty, or could foresee the harm. The trial turned on causation and damages: proving that C-8 caused Travis Abbott's cancer.

In March 2020, the jury found for the Abbotts and awarded $50 million. $40 million went to Travis Abbott for his injuries, and $10 million went to Julie Abbott. The jury declined to add punitive damages. At the time it was the largest of the C-8 cancer verdicts.

After the verdict, the trial court applied Ohio's statutory cap on noneconomic damages to Julie Abbott's loss-of-consortium award, reducing it from $10 million to $250,000. Travis Abbott's $40 million award was left intact, and with stipulated pre-judgment interest the court entered a final judgment of about $40.3 million. DuPont said it would challenge the rulings and the verdict, arguing that the district court had limited its defenses and that its statute-of-limitations defense should have won. On December 5, 2022, the Sixth Circuit affirmed that judgment. The court found that Abbott had sued within two years of learning of the link between C-8 and his cancer, and it upheld the use of findings from the prior trials.

DuPont then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. On November 20, 2023, the Court denied review, leaving the judgment in place. Justice Kavanaugh would have granted the petition, and Justice Thomas dissented from the denial.