Federal Jury Awards $5.1 Million in Second DuPont C-8 Cancer Bellwether

For decades, DuPont's Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, discharged C-8, also called PFOA, into the Ohio River and the groundwater that fed drinking water systems across the Mid-Ohio Valley. The chemical was used to make Teflon. Internal company records later showed DuPont tracked how the compound was building up in the blood of nearby residents.

David Freeman lived in that region and drank from a public water supply tied to the contamination. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Years earlier, an independent science panel created under a prior class settlement had found a probable link between C-8 and six conditions, testicular cancer among them. Freeman sued in the multidistrict litigation consolidated in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, formally titled In re E.I. du Pont de Nemours C-8 Personal Injury Litigation, which grouped roughly 3,550 claims from Ohio and West Virginia.

Cory Watson attorney Jon Conlin served as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs across that litigation. Freeman's case was chosen as the second bellwether trial, a test case meant to gauge how juries would value the larger group of claims. Over about five weeks, the plaintiffs' trial team presented evidence that DuPont released C-8 for years while monitoring its spread, and argued the company put production ahead of the health of the people downstream.

On July 6, 2016, the jury awarded Freeman $5.1 million in compensatory damages. It found DuPont negligent and concluded the company acted with actual malice, a finding of conscious disregard for the safety of others that opened the door to punitive damages and fees. Two days later, in a separate phase, the jury added $500,000 in punitive damages, bringing the total to $5.6 million. The first bellwether, tried a year earlier, had ended in a $1.6 million award with no punitive damages.

The verdict was not reduced or overturned on appeal. In February 2017, before the appeals ran their course, DuPont and its spinoff Chemours agreed to a $670.7 million cash settlement that resolved all of the roughly 3,550 C-8 cases, Freeman's included. The two companies split the payment evenly, about $335 million each.