High-profile PFAS settlements and increasing federal and state regulation of the chemicals are driving changes in the way environmental insurance policies are written, with insurance professionals noting that both product liability and pollution claims will be impacted.

“You know, you see the DuPonts and the 3Ms and Tycos of the world settling, entrancing major settlements, billion-dollar settlements,” Robert Horkovich, managing partner at law firm Anderson Kill and attorney who specializes in insurance issues, told Inside PFAS Policy. “It’s already happening . . . the liability is being recognized, and the liability insurance companies have been notified.”

Horkovich was referencing recent settlements in multidistrict litigation (MDL) between drinking water providers and major companies that manufactured per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) or used the chemicals in firefighting foam. 3M has agreed to pay up to $12.5 billion, DuPont and its spinoff companies Chemours and Corteva have agreed to pay $1.185 billion and Tyco Fire Products has agreed to pay $750 million.

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Horkovich, at the same Strafford webinar about PFAS insurance issues, said that “lawsuits are getting filed against anybody who was anywhere in the process or in the system of manufacturing or using these elements,” adding that both firefighters and water districts are examples of parties involved in PFAS suits.

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Horkovich further told Inside PFAS Policy, “If I have a cancer that somehow can be linked to a ‘forever chemical,’ how do I know it’s Tyco’s forever chemical? How do I know it’s DuPont’s forever chemical? How do I know it’s 3M’s forever chemical? So, the insurance company should be defending the policies, protecting them from those judgments. I’m unaware -- as I sit here right now, not that it means it doesn’t exist -- of individual lawsuits that have been successful establishing [causation].”

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