CHARLESTON, S.C. (Legal Newsline) – The federal judge overseeing PFAS litigation has told plaintiff lawyers that files they are seeking from 3M don’t seem to exist.
Judge Richard Mark Gergel, on the bench in Charleston, S.C., rejected the Plaintiff Executive Committee’s motion to compel production of the custodial file of former 3M CEO Lewis Lehr. The company is one of many defendants facing lawsuits over PFAS, a group of chemicals used in firefighting foam and consumer products like non-stick cookware.
The chemicals enter and never leave the bloodstreams of humans, leading to their nickname “forever chemicals.” The exact health effects aren’t known, as the federal government struggles to pass official toxicity levels while states pass their own and hire private attorneys on contingency fees to file lawsuits.
Federal cases are put in a multidistrict litigation proceeding in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. There, plaintiffs lawyers have already received hundreds of thousands of documents from 3M but believed the company was holding out when it came to Lehr’s work.
Lehr was on 3M’s board of directors from 1974-1991 and was its CEO from 1979-1986. All 3M found from his personal work was a lab notebook from 1947 relating to his work on tape.
The plaintiffs lawyer say there must be more because 3M knew about problems with PFAS during his tenure and that 3M produced more than 29,000 documents from Lehr’s tenure, some of which reference him.
It also says if Lehr’s custodial file existed but has been destroyed, 3M had a duty to preserve it. 3M has produced more than 750,000 other documents.
Judge Gergel could not order the release of files he doesn’t know to exist.
“The PEC may renew its motion to compel if or when it can demonstrate that the Lehr custodial file exists, but is not being produced,” he wrote.
3M said it interviewed former employees, searched off-site archives and searched Lehr’s successor’s documents but did not find a file on Lehr.
PFAS lawsuits blame the chemicals for a variety of health problems, some of which were linked by a health study that was part of a settlement with DuPont. But others say the science on how PFAS affect the human body is incomplete.
Meanwhile, as the government still requires PFAS in its firefighting foam on military bases, lawyers pursue litigation like an Ohio class action that alleges no illnesses.