Scott Summy

Public-Water and Environmental Litigation

Scott Summy founded and leads Baron & Budd’s Environmental Litigation Group. He serves as court-appointed co-lead counsel and class counsel for public-water plaintiffs in the aqueous film-forming foam multidistrict litigation.

MTBE Groundwater Litigation

The call came in August 1995, when Scott Summy was a young lawyer. A North Carolina man said his family and neighbors had been drinking from private wells contaminated with methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, an additive blended into gasoline. The question at the kitchen tap reached backward through groundwater, storage, and sale to the companies responsible for the fuel.

Summy pursued Conoco for the residents in Ashcraft v. Conoco. The litigation proceeded through discovery and trial before settlement. The gasoline additive imposed years of testing and treatment costs on households that relied on the affected wells.

Santa Monica’s later MTBE litigation produced agreements valued by the court at $315.5 million, including treatment intended to restore affected municipal wells. Summy’s team used sampling and groundwater-plume evidence to define the contamination, engineering plans to establish the required treatment infrastructure, and utility operating records to document the public expense. Laboratory results located the MTBE, hydrogeology traced its movement, and treatment design supported funded restoration and continuing obligations for the affected water system.

Summy formed Baron & Budd’s Environmental Litigation Group in 2002. He now leads a team of about thirty lawyers and staff representing cities, towns, counties, water districts, and public authorities in contamination matters.

The AFFF Public-Water Settlements

Claims involving per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances from aqueous film-forming foam were centralized in the District of South Carolina as MDL No. 2873. Airports, military installations, and firefighting sites were among the alleged release points. Public water systems sought funding for testing, treatment, construction, filter media, disposal, and continuing operation.

The court appointed Summy co-lead counsel for the public-water plaintiffs. He co-chaired general-liability and science work, served as class counsel, and helped design the evidence and allocation structure governing nationwide utility relief. The settlement classes included systems with qualifying PFAS detections and systems subject to required testing. Allocation formulas use system flow and measured concentration to connect national funds to each utility’s testing and treatment burden. The class programs allow eligible providers to seek money for sampling, engineering, construction, filter media, disposal, and years of operation without retrying common product and causation questions system by system.

A utility may need laboratory work before it knows whether it qualifies, capital construction before a filter can operate, and recurring funds to replace media and dispose of captured material. The allocation rules determine how national settlement funds reach those local costs.

Judge Richard Gergel entered final approval of the 3M public-water settlement on March 29, 2024. 3M valued its obligation at a present value of $10.3 billion, with scheduled payments carrying a nominal value as high as $12.5 billion through 2036.

DuPont de Nemours, Chemours, and Corteva agreed to a separate $1.185 billion fund. Tyco Fire Products and Chemguard agreed to $750 million, and BASF agreed to $312.5 million plus a separate $4 million payment for notice. The court granted final approval to the Tyco and BASF agreements in November 2024.

From Approval to Administration

By July 2026, the work had shifted from obtaining approval orders to administering the settlements. The settlement program required active Phase Two systems to submit test results by July 1, 2026, and set July 31 as the Action Fund claim deadline. Those dates governed whether current testing and treatment needs reached the administrator in time for consideration under the agreements.

Approval established the fund, class, and rules; claims administrators determine utility allocations, engineers specify the necessary equipment, and operators maintain it after construction. The 3M payment schedule through 2036 recognizes PFAS treatment as a continuing public-service cost extending beyond a single repair.

PCB and Atrazine Settlements

On November 19, 2022, the court entered final approval of a $537.5 million nationwide class settlement concerning Monsanto’s polychlorinated biphenyls and municipal stormwater systems discharging to waters impaired by PCBs. Separate resolutions with Washington, the District of Columbia, and New Mexico totaled $167.6 million.

The claims concerned PCBs remaining in buildings, soil, sediment, and stormwater decades after domestic production ended. Municipal proof drew on contamination data, affected infrastructure, remediation needs, and the defendants’ manufacturing and sales histories.

A $105 million atrazine settlement covered more than two thousand community water systems and addressed monitoring and treatment expenses associated with the agricultural herbicide’s presence in drinking-water sources.

Environmental Litigation Practice

Summy’s practice has included MTBE in groundwater, atrazine in community water supplies, PCBs in municipal stormwater, and PFAS associated with firefighting foam and industrial facilities. The matters draw on laboratory science, utility records, hydrogeology, engineering evidence, allocation methods, and court-supervised claims administration.