Gary J. Douglas

PFOA in the Ohio River

Gary Douglas’s PFAS cases followed a manufactured chemical from a plant, into a river and through the blood of the people who lived downstream.

Six Diseases

C8 was useful because it resisted heat, oil, stains and water. It also resisted disappearance. The name commonly used for perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, left DuPont’s Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia, entered the Ohio River and moved through drinking-water systems serving communities on both sides of the state line.

A 2005 class settlement created an unusual scientific process. Three independent epidemiologists formed the C8 Science Panel and studied residents whose water had carried the chemical. The work eventually drew health information and blood samples from tens of thousands of people. The panel defined a probable link as a conclusion that, among the exposed class, it was more likely than not that C8 exposure and a disease were connected.

After years of study, the panel found probable links to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol and pregnancy-induced hypertension, including preeclampsia. Under the settlement, residents with those diseases could then pursue individual claims without relitigating whether C8 was capable of causing the listed condition among the exposed population.

Gary Douglas helped try the first three C8 cases selected from the federal multidistrict litigation. Each ended in a plaintiff’s verdict. The trials asked a second, intimate question after the panel’s broad conclusion: had the contaminated water caused this person’s disease?

Carla, David and Ted

Carla Bartlett developed kidney cancer after drinking water supplied in the contaminated region. Hers was the first C8 bellwether tried to a jury. In October 2015, jurors awarded her $1.6 million.

David Freeman, a petroleum-engineering professor and distance runner, developed testicular cancer. His trial lasted five weeks. The jury awarded $5.1 million in compensatory damages and found that DuPont had acted with malice. In a second phase, it added $500,000 in punitive damages, bringing the verdict to $5.6 million.

Ted Vigneron also developed testicular cancer after years of drinking water from affected systems in Ohio. In December 2016, the jury awarded $2 million in compensatory damages. It then added $10.5 million in punitive damages.

Douglas’s closing imperative was “Make them own it.” The trial proof connected each diagnosis to contaminated drinking water through blood studies, water-system records, medical evidence, and DuPont’s decisions at Washington Works.

In 2017, DuPont and Chemours agreed to resolve approximately 3,550 C8 personal-injury claims for about $670.7 million. Three public trials had given the remaining cases a tested scientific and factual setting. The residents’ blood studies supplied the shared evidence; Bartlett, Freeman and Vigneron presented individual cases.

How the Science Panel Changed the Trials

The 2005 settlement divided the science into two questions. Three independent epidemiologists first decided which diseases were probably linked to C8 across the exposed population. Only those diseases could move to the next stage, where each plaintiff still had to prove that C8 caused the individual illness.

Douglas still had to prove each plaintiff’s exposure, diagnosis, specific causation, and damages. DuPont could challenge the person’s medical history and dose, but the panel’s findings supplied the common scientific premise for Bartlett, Freeman, Vigneron, and the other linked-disease claims.

Ohio Valley residents supplied blood samples and health questionnaires for the Science Panel. Water-system sampling reconstructed concentrations by district and period, residence records identified who received the water, and medical records tied diagnoses to years of exposure. Together, those records supported both the shared scientific findings and the individual trials.

The Morning Before Trial

A later PFAS docket concerned aqueous film-forming foam, used for decades to suppress fuel fires. The chemicals in AFFF entered soil and groundwater around airports, military facilities and fire-training grounds. Public water providers faced the cost of finding contamination, designing treatment and operating filtration for years.

The federal cases were centralized in South Carolina. Courts selected the City of Stuart, Florida, as the first public-water bellwether, and Douglas was chosen as lead trial counsel. Douglas and the trial team assembled 3M’s PFAS history, expert science, and the treatment burden facing one water system for the jury.

The Stuart bellwether reduced the national dispute to one city’s wells, testing dates, PFAS concentrations, engineering costs, company documents, witnesses, and expert testimony.

On the morning trial was set to begin, the proceeding was adjourned while a national agreement took form. 3M ultimately committed between $10.5 billion and $12.5 billion to eligible public water systems. DuPont-related companies reached a separate $1.185 billion agreement. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel granted final approval to both settlements in 2024.

Pipes, Filters, Years

A water-system settlement has no single surgery or lost wage to measure. The utility must sample each well, design and build treatment, replace filters, dispose of captured chemicals, and test the water leaving the plant. The first construction bill becomes years of operating expense while contamination persists.

The 3M agreement created a claims process for qualifying public water systems based on testing and contamination status. Its scale reflected the number of systems potentially affected and the long life of PFAS in groundwater. The funds were intended for pipes, filters, and laboratory work—the practical work of removing contamination.

The completed Stuart trial record gave the parties a concrete measure of the evidence and risks before the national agreements were reached.

Earlier Product Cases

Douglas’s earlier work included an air-bag case involving a child, tobacco litigation in New York, the osteoporosis drug Fosamax, and a surgical stapler. Each matter required different engineering or medical evidence.

Products That Change Form

Douglas’s docket repeatedly involves a product whose harmful component becomes difficult to see after release. PFOA leaves a plant and becomes a concentration in blood and water. Firefighting foam leaves a training ground and becomes a treatment burden at the well. Medicines, air-bag systems, and surgical devices require different chains of engineering or medical proof, but the litigation still has to follow the product from design and warning to contact and injury.

That change of form determines the evidence. Chemical cases require source history, sampling, fate and transport, toxicology, diagnosis, and dose. Public-water claims add utility operations: affected wells, flow rates, treatment design, capital expense, and years of replacement media. A medical-device or pharmaceutical case narrows the chain to a product, a patient, a clinical decision, and the information available when that decision was made.

From Three Plaintiffs to a National Fund

Bartlett, Freeman, and Vigneron gave the C8 litigation three public verdicts, each built on the same population science but a different life. Stuart placed the PFAS history beside one city’s infrastructure. Neither scale erased the other. The individual trials tested whether common science could explain a particular disease; the water-system bellwether tested whether national product history could be translated into pumps, filters, and operating costs.

After settlement, the work moved from proving the case to delivering the remedy. Testing results show which systems qualify. PFAS levels and treatment needs shape each payment. Court approval alone does not clean a well: the settlement must fund an operating treatment system, restore a contaminated source, or prevent ratepayers from bearing the full cost.

Ownership in the Evidence

“Make them own it” condensed a record rather than substituting for one. In the C8 cases, ownership was built through water-system records, blood studies, medical histories, and company decisions. In the AFFF litigation, it rested on wells, testing dates, engineering costs, and documents created years before contamination reached a utility’s budget.

Douglas follows liability to the place where a product’s consequences become measurable: a diagnosis, a treatment plant, a filter that must be replaced. The case may begin with chemistry. It reaches judgment only after the chemistry is attached to a person or a public system.