Ned McWilliams

The Water Beneath Stuart

A trial set for June 5, 2023, placed Stuart's contaminated wells, decades of firefighting foam, and a corporate paper trail reaching back to the 1960s on the same calendar. Ned McWilliams helped assemble the proof that stood ready for that Monday morning — proof that preceded finally approved public-water settlements directing more than $12.7 billion toward treatment systems across the country.

The Wells

Stuart draws its drinking water from wells beneath Florida's Atlantic coast. In 2016, state regulators informed the city that two synthetic chemicals — PFOA and PFOS — were present above then-applicable federal health-advisory levels in some of its well water. Testing ultimately detected one or both compounds in nearly every city well.

The city traced the contamination to aqueous film-forming foam used for decades in local firefighting exercises. Its lawsuit alleged that manufacturers placed PFAS-containing products into commerce despite knowing the chemicals would persist and spread. Stuart installed an ion-exchange system designed to reduce the compounds to undetectable levels, then sought to place the treatment expense where it belonged — on the manufacturers rather than the city's roughly 17,000 residents.

The federal court consolidated Stuart's claim into the AFFF multidistrict litigation in Charleston, South Carolina, where U.S. District Judge Richard M. Gergel selected Stuart as the first public-water bellwether. McWilliams, a Levin Papantonio Rafferty shareholder serving on the litigation's science and discovery committees, helped direct the scientific and evidentiary preparation and served on the city's trial team. Out of thousands of consolidated claims, Stuart supplied the first municipal well field prepared for a jury in the national proceeding.

Twenty-Two Years

The preparation joined hydrogeology to corporate history. Water samples and treatment models established where the chemicals had traveled and what removal would cost. Depositions and records dating to the 1960s established what the manufacturers knew. McWilliams told reporters that 3M had been the sole domestic manufacturer of PFOS. He described evidence that the company knew its chemistry had entered the blood of the general population, considered notifying the Environmental Protection Agency, and withheld the information for twenty-two years.

Retired 3M toxicologist John Butenhoff gave video testimony that 3M was more likely than not the source of PFOS found around the world. Stuart also planned to use internal studies and regulatory records to establish notice. When the defense moved to exclude the city's expert testimony, Judge Gergel rejected the omnibus challenge, holding that the experts' methods were the product of reliable principles under the Daubert standard — a ruling McWilliams called “incredibly significant, especially in the first bellwether trial for this MDL.” The court further ruled that evidence concerning 3M's compliance with federal reporting duties and its 2006 settlement with the EPA could bear on knowledge of the alleged dangers, subject to an appropriate limiting instruction.

As trial approached, the record linked dated documents, measured concentrations, named wells, and the resin vessels Stuart had already installed.

Monday Morning

Case Management Order 19G placed Stuart on the June 5, 2023, trial calendar. The order required witness lists, jury instructions, deposition designations, pretrial briefs, and core exhibit lists. By late May, the parties had moved from general discovery into the particulars of what jurors would see and hear.

Three weeks before trial, Judge Gergel denied contested motions in limine and permitted Stuart to offer evidence concerning 3M's federal reporting obligations and EPA settlement as relevant to notice. The ruling preserved the components of the city's corporate-knowledge proof as the parties completed witness, deposition, pretrial, and exhibit preparation.

On Friday, June 2, DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva announced an agreement with public water systems, displacing the Stuart trial scheduled for the following Monday. Later that month, 3M announced a separate nationwide public-water agreement. The sequence placed nationwide settlement negotiations against an immediate, trial-ready test of source, corporate knowledge, and cleanup costs: the bellwether had moved through discovery, evidentiary motions, witness preparation, and exhibit selection before the agreements displaced the jury trial. Stuart served as the first public-water bellwether in the national MDL and reached the eve of trial before those agreements entered the court-supervised national proceeding.

Four Public-Water Settlements

The June 2023 announcements began a court-supervised settlement process rather than ending the litigation at the moment the Stuart trial came off calendar. Judge Gergel ultimately approved four public-water settlements creating more than $12.7 billion in relief. The DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva agreement contributed $1.185 billion, Tyco and Chemguard contributed $750 million, and BASF contributed $312.5 million plus a separate $4 million payment for notice; those funds joined the 3M resolution for affected public water systems.

Allocation procedures use each affected source's flow rate and PFAS concentration as principal inputs, with adjustments for measured contamination, water volume, treatment need, and claims data. The structure directs recovery toward remediation rather than a flat payment per utility — money follows contamination.

The results are measurable at the tap. In September 2025, the Orange County Water District and fourteen local providers reported an expected $131 million over eight years from the initial 3M and DuPont phases, with about $23 million received. The district reported that treatment had returned 49 groundwater wells to service and that 57 additional systems were being planned, designed, or built. The national settlements are financing pumps, treatment media, construction, and the return of cleaner water to distribution networks.

Settlement at the Trial Date

McWilliams had reached another mass-tort settlement at the edge of trial once before. Federal Pradaxa claims were centralized in southern Illinois in 2012 after patients alleged that the anticoagulant caused severe or fatal bleeding and that Boehringer Ingelheim had not adequately warned of the risk. Judge David R. Herndon appointed McWilliams to the plaintiffs' executive committee.

The first trial was scheduled for September 2014. In May, Boehringer agreed to a $650 million program covering approximately 4,000 federal and state claims, with payments assigned through claim-specific injury factors. McWilliams's bellwether preparation helped create the common medical, regulatory, and causation record that supported a nationwide resolution for thousands of clients.

In Pradaxa, the $650 million program was announced four months before the first scheduled trial; in Stuart, public-water agreements displaced the June 5, 2023 bellwether after discovery, evidentiary motions, witness preparation, and exhibit selection had been completed. His PFAS work continues on other fronts — he was appointed class counsel in Hardwick v. 3M in the Southern District of Ohio, representing a class of Ohio residents with measurable PFAS in their blood in an action seeking comprehensive human health testing, and he has pressed for contamination to be addressed at its source, where every rainfall carries the chemicals downstream toward someone's drinking water.