Elizabeth A. Fegan

A remedy measured in decades

College athletes do not experience concussion risk as a single event. Exposure accumulates across practices and games, while symptoms may appear long after a season ends. The national litigation against the NCAA alleged that the association had failed to adopt and manage adequate concussion rules. The NCAA denied liability. The proposed class remedy therefore had to address people whose future medical needs could not be fixed on the date of settlement.

Elizabeth A. Fegan helped present the settlement as plaintiffs’ counsel, working with Steve Berman and a larger group of class lawyers. The court required changes before preliminary approval, forcing the parties to refine who would be covered, how medical monitoring would operate, and how the agreement related to athletes’ individual injury claims.

Final approval came in August 2019, and the settlement became effective that November. Its medical-monitoring program is scheduled to continue for fifty years. The term allows screening when symptoms emerge years after competition and addresses medical needs beyond diagnoses known at settlement.

The agreement created a $70 million Medical Monitoring Fund and a $5 million research fund. Eligible class members can complete a screening questionnaire and, when indicated, receive in-person medical evaluations without out-of-pocket cost. The program generally provides up to two evaluations, with a possible third under specified circumstances, through regional locations overseen with input from a medical science committee.

The settlement also required baseline testing, return-to-play policies, concussion reporting and education, and medical best practices. Those measures reduced information gaps and created monitoring rules while athletes retained qualifying personal-injury claims outside the class settlement.

The nationwide class shared allegations about NCAA rules and monitoring needs, while individual injuries differed. The settlement created shared medical access and preserved qualifying personal-injury claims for separate proof.

A common record, distinct experiences

The litigation arising from former University of Southern California gynecologist George Tyndall demanded a different structure. Former patients alleged sexual misconduct and institutional failures over many years. The class proceeding concerned a deeply personal form of harm, in which privacy, choice, and differences among survivors could not be treated as administrative complications. Fegan served on the plaintiffs’ executive committee and as interim class counsel with a team of lawyers.

Before seeking preliminary approval, counsel reviewed university and medical records, interviewed hundreds of women, and worked with experts. The investigation developed common evidence about USC’s knowledge and response and tested whether a class process could offer meaningful relief without requiring every survivor to recount the same experience publicly or in the same manner.

The proposed settlement established a $215 million non-reversionary cash fund. Attorneys’ fees and expenses were to be paid separately rather than deducted from that fund. The allocation process offered different paths, including payments available without a detailed submission and higher levels for claimants who elected to provide additional information through a confidential process.

The agreement also included an independent women’s health advocate, oversight and reporting mechanisms, and measures directed at clinical standards, consent, complaints, and prevention. Those provisions responded to an institutional problem that a distribution formula alone could not reach. They also created duties capable of being evaluated after the settlement became effective.

The settlement left disputed allegations unresolved and used shared evidence about institutional conduct, private claim procedures, forward-looking reforms, and compensation while preserving differences in survivors’ experiences and choices.

Claims Before Later Testing

The public-water-system settlement with 3M posed the class question prospectively. Thousands of systems had detected certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or faced testing that could reveal them later. Plaintiffs alleged that 3M had known of risks associated with PFAS and failed to warn. The company resolved specified claims without admitting liability. The class therefore included both measured contamination and the possibility of future detection.

In March 2024, the federal court entered final approval of a settlement valued between $10.5 billion and $12.5 billion for roughly 12,000 public water systems. Fegan and FeganScott were among appointed class counsel, working with a broad leadership team. The court’s order confirms that the agreement was designed to fund testing and treatment-related claims across systems with different sampling histories and infrastructure needs.

The settlement divided eligible systems into two phases. Phase One covered systems with qualifying PFAS detections; Phase Two addressed systems required to test later or whose status had not yet been established. Fifty-five percent of the fund was allocated to Phase One and forty-five percent to Phase Two. The division reserved substantial relief for utilities whose injury could not yet be documented in the same way.

Fegan’s identified work included representing Phase Two claimants and pressing for treatment comparable to systems that already had detections. That role was exact but collaborative. She did not act as sole architect of a national settlement; she served within class counsel and focused on a constituency at risk of being discounted because its evidence would arrive later.

Phase Two required testing schedules, notice, registration, and claims deadlines after final approval. Those steps determined whether utilities with later-detected contamination could receive the funds reserved for them. The approval order established the rules; utilities and administrators still had to perform the sampling, registration, and claim review.

The class included systems exposed to a common product and shared testing obligations even though individual measurements would occur at different times. Deadlines, claim forms, allocation rules, and future testing determined which systems could receive payment after later detections.

Class Remedies Across Different Injuries

Fegan founded FeganScott with Timothy Scott in 2019 and serves as its managing member. Her plaintiff-side practice includes consumer, antitrust, discrimination, sexual-abuse, product-liability, privacy, sports, and PFAS matters. The range is broad, but the matters share a narrower question: how a class remedy can address common conduct without erasing individual differences.

The NCAA agreement measures time in decades because neurological effects can emerge later. The USC settlement pairs confidential claimant choices with institutional reform because survivors do not approach disclosure in one way. The 3M agreement reserves a phase for water systems whose testing record is incomplete. Each remedy is shaped by the feature that could otherwise exclude part of the represented group.

Across the three matters, the legal work included defining membership, preserving individual claims where appropriate, allocating funds, building confidential processes, and specifying obligations that continue after approval. Defendants retain their denials unless the record says otherwise, and courts remain responsible for testing fairness, adequacy, and administration.

Fegan works from Chicago and is admitted in Illinois and California. Her current biography describes nearly three decades in complex plaintiff litigation. Her role in these matters included class leadership, remedy design, and representation of groups whose evidence or injuries emerged at different times.