$27 Million Settlement for Hoosick Falls Residents in DuPont PFOA Water Contamination Case
Won by Weitz & Luxenberg.
James Bilsborrow of Weitz and Luxenberg served as co-lead class counsel for more than 4,000 Hoosick Falls residents whose drinking water was contaminated with PFOA from a nearby DuPont Teflon manufacturing facility, securing a $27 million settlement in 2025.
What happened
For more than a decade, residents of Hoosick Falls, a small village in upstate New York, drank water laced with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) flowing from a Teflon cookware manufacturing facility operated by chemical companies including DuPont. The contamination came to light around 2014, when blood tests revealed that many residents carried PFOA concentrations more than 30 times higher than the national average. PFOA, a synthetic 'forever chemical,' does not break down in the body or the environment, and long-term exposure has been linked to testicular, kidney, and thyroid cancers.
A federal class action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York on behalf of village and town residents who suffered property damage and elevated chemical levels in their blood. James Bilsborrow of Weitz and Luxenberg served as co-lead counsel for the plaintiff class alongside Stephen Schwarz of Faraci Lange. More than 4,000 claims were submitted by class members during the enrollment period.
After years of litigation and with trial approaching in 2025, DuPont agreed to pay $27 million to resolve the claims. The settlement came without any admission of wrongdoing by DuPont. Under the agreement, distributions were directed toward residents for loss of property value, with checks for property damage expected in August 2026 following final court approval. An additional $6 million medical monitoring fund was established for residents to track long-term health effects from PFOA exposure.
U.S. District Judge Mae A. D'Agostino granted final approval of the settlement on April 29, 2026. The DuPont resolution closed the last major chapter of the Hoosick Falls litigation. Three other defendants, Saint-Gobain, Honeywell, and 3M, had settled in 2021 for a combined $65.25 million. Together the settlements brought total compensation for Hoosick Falls residents to more than $92 million.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Weitz & Luxenberg
All Weitz & Luxenberg proven verdicts →As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.
Ellen Relkin served as court-appointed co-lead plaintiffs counsel in the DePuy ASR hip implant MDL, helping negotiate a $2.5 billion settlement for roughly 8,000 patients who required revision surgery after the metal-on-metal device failed.
Hours before opening arguments in the first federal opioid bellwether trial, Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Ohio secured a $260 million settlement from distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson, plus manufacturer Teva.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.