$12.5 Billion 3M PFAS Settlement: Paul Napoli Secures Largest Drinking-Water Recovery in U.S. History
Won by Napoli Shkolnik.
As court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik negotiated a settlement requiring 3M Company to pay up to $12.5 billion to public water systems contaminated by PFAS compounds in firefighting foam, the largest drinking-water settlement in American legal history.
What happened
For generations, aqueous film-forming foam was the go-to suppression agent at military installations, commercial airports, and industrial fire-training sites across the United States. It extinguished fuel fires fast. But the chemistry behind that effectiveness carried a hidden cost. The foam contained per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of synthetic compounds that resist breakdown in soil, water, and the human body. Over decades, those compounds leached from training grounds and spill sites into groundwater, then into the distribution systems that deliver drinking water to millions of American households.
Public water utilities began detecting PFAS in their supply wells and treatment plants. Removing the contamination required costly filtration upgrades and long-term monitoring programs that strained municipal budgets. Utilities from coast to coast filed suit against the manufacturers that had produced and sold AFFF products for decades. The federal cases were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina as In Re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foam Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2873, assigned to Judge Richard M. Gergel.
Judge Gergel appointed a leadership structure to manage litigation on behalf of thousands of plaintiff water systems. Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik was named a court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs' counsel, placing him at the command of one of the most complex environmental tort dockets in federal court history. In that role, Napoli oversaw discovery, expert strategy, and settlement negotiations across multiple defendant tracks simultaneously.
3M Company, a primary manufacturer of PFAS-based firefighting foam chemistry, was among the largest targets. Negotiations produced a settlement agreement announced in June 2023 under which 3M committed to pay between $10.5 billion and $12.5 billion, with the final figure scaling based on participation by eligible water systems. The settlement class covered public water systems that had detected PFAS at any level or that anticipated doing so. Judge Gergel granted final approval on March 29, 2024. Payments are structured to run from the third quarter of 2024 through 2036. The agreement does not resolve personal injury claims or state natural resource suits against 3M.
The 3M settlement was one of four major AFFF recoveries the co-lead team secured in MDL 2873. Law360 recognized Napoli as a 2024 Environmental MVP, citing the four settlements with 3M, Tyco Fire Products, DuPont and its spin-offs, and BASF Corporation, collectively representing billions of dollars directed toward PFAS remediation at public water systems nationwide. At $12.5 billion, the 3M agreement stands as the largest recovery ever obtained for drinking-water contamination in United States legal history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Napoli Shkolnik
All Napoli Shkolnik proven verdicts →As court-appointed co-lead counsel in AFFF MDL 2873, Paul J. Napoli of Napoli Shkolnik helped negotiate a $1.185 billion class settlement with DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva to compensate public water systems across the United States for PFAS contamination tied to firefighting foam.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik represented Nassau County in negotiations that produced a $1.1 billion settlement with McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, the three largest prescription drug distributors in the United States.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Hunter Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for individual plaintiffs in the consolidated federal Flint water litigation, which produced a $600 million settlement from the State of Michigan in 2020.
Related class action verdicts
John Eddie Williams, Jr. served as one of five private attorneys retained by the State of Texas to sue the major tobacco companies, producing a $15.3 billion settlement in January 1998, the largest single-case settlement in U.S. history at the time.
Steven Marks and Ricardo Martinez-Cid of Podhurst Orseck served on the NFL Concussion Litigation Plaintiffs' Executive Committee, helping negotiate an uncapped settlement projected to exceed $1 billion for more than 20,000 retired players suffering traumatic brain injuries.
Monsanto and its chemical spinoff Solutia agreed in August 2003 to pay $700 million to resolve claims from more than 21,000 Anniston, Alabama residents who were exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls the company manufactured and dumped near their homes for nearly four decades.
A federal jury in San Francisco found Google liable for invasion of privacy and intrusion upon seclusion after the company kept collecting data from third-party apps for users who had switched off the Web & App Activity setting. On September 3, 2025, the jury awarded $425,651,947 in compensatory damages and declined to award punitive damages. The award is a single class-wide figure shared by two nationwide classes of about 98 million users, not one person's recovery. The judge refused to set the verdict aside in August 2026, and Google has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.