Levin Papantonio C8 Trial Team Helps Land $10.5M Verdict Against Dupont

Jurors in Columbus, OH recently ordered Dupont to pay cancer patient, Kenneth Vigneron $10.5 million in punitive damages, on top of a previous award of $2 million in compensatory damages. It’s the largest punitive award yet in the multidistrict litigation involving C8.

Jurors returned the punitive verdict this week, after awarding Vigneron $2 million in compensatory damages shortly before Christmas. Vigneron said that the company's decades of dumping former Teflon manufacturing ingredient C8 into the air and water from a West Virginia factory into the Ohio River caused a cancer cluster in a number of Ohio water districts.

“DuPont has a billion dollar problem they refuse to acknowledge,” said Levin Papantonio personal injury attorney Wes Bowden. “For half a century, DuPont spewed cancer causing C8 out in the river and air because they didn’t want to spend the money to handle it safely. They made a DuPont problem a community problem. It’s time for DuPont to correct their mistakes and compensate the thousands of people whom they injured and the communities they have placed at risk.”

In two earlier cases tried by the law firm, jurors also returned verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs. Carla Bartlett, a mother who suffered from kidney cancer, was awarded $1.6 million in October 2015. The following July, jurors awarded testicular cancer patient David Freeman $5.1 million in compensatory damages in the second trial against Dupont.

The Levin Papantonio Law Firm in Pensacola, FL continues to pursue an action against Dupont over its release of the chemical perfluorooctanoate (aka PFOA or C8) in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Award winning attorney Mike Papantonio and his firm’s C8 team are taking on the vastly wealthy and powerful DuPont on behalf of some 3,500 plaintiffs suffering from illnesses related to the toxic chemical.

The Levin Papantonio C 8 trial team will be back in Columbus, Oh for the next trial which begins January, 17. They are representing testicular cancer patient Larry Moody against Dupont.

These verdicts continue the Levin Papantonio Firm’s legacy of environmental class action success. Attorney Mike Papantonio and the Levin Papantonio Firm received the 2016 Elite Trial Lawyers award, from the National Law Journal, for their work on the Dupont litigation.

“Some cases defy their traditional legal classifications,” editors with the National Law Journal wrote, “because their impact and reach are much broader. The two finalists and the winning firm in this category went beyond helping the individuals and classes they represented; they sent strong messages about the costs of not protecting the environment.”

Papantonio and the firm’s legacy also includes a ground-breaking series of verdicts against DuPont for the zinc-smelting contamination of the town of Spelter, West Virginia after a four month jury trial which resulted in $380 million in total verdicts from the trial, in 2007. In that litigation, Levin Papantonio represented a class of more than 2,300 persons harmed by heavy metal contamination from the smelting operations and ultimately achieved a class-wide settlement for residents of the community.

If you’d like to learn more about C8 and the litigation against Dupont, visit the Levin Papantonio website at C8 Litigation.