Forever Chemicals, Endless Claims: The PFAS Litigation Boom In 2025
PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances often called “forever chemicals” continue to dominate headlines and court dockets in late 2025. As regulatory pressure mounts and scientific understanding deepen, the pace of PFAS litigation is accelerating, with critical legal developments between October and November 2025 shaping who will bear the financial burden of this pervasive contamination. From insurance battles to municipal claims and new manufacturer suits, this moment may define how PFAS liability is allocated for years to come.
The Legal Landscape in Late 2025: What’s Driving the Surge
Several interconnected trends have fueled this litigation boom in October–November 2025:
- Explosion of Filings in MDLs
According to recent legal-tracker data, more than 1,000 new PFAS lawsuits were filed in early November 2025 into the AFFF (aqueous film–forming foam) multidistrict litigation (MDL). AFFF Firefighting Foam Lawsuits have been consolidated into multidistrict litigation (MDL 2873) in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.
The MDL’s growth reflects both increasing recognition of PFAS harms and a strategic filing window created by the court. As of October 2025, there were estimated to be over 13,000 active AFFF-based cases, up by more than 1,000 from month to month.1
- Regulatory Pressure and Political Spotlight
In October 2025, 36 members of Congress signed a letter expressing serious concern about delays in PFAS cleanup on military bases.2
- Changes in Insurance Coverage
As settlements grow larger and contamination claims proliferate, insurers are rethinking how they underwrite environmental risk. Inside EPA reported in October 2025, PFAS litigation is already prompting changes in environmental insurance policies, especially in how product liability and pollution coverage are structured.
Legal experts are warning that PFAS could become the “next asbestos” for insurers: with decades of potential exposure and long-term bodily persistence, PFAS claims may rival asbestos in scope.
- Settlement Pressure Ahead of Key Trials
With a major trial originally scheduled for October 20, 2025, involving claims of kidney cancer tied to AFFF exposure, the MDL judge has urged parties to settle before the case goes to the jury. Though the bellwether trial has reportedly been postponed, the looming threat of trial continues to push both sides toward negotiated resolutions.
- New Manufacturer Lawsuits
In mid-October 2025, Kimberly-Clark was sued for alleged PFAS contamination of waterways in New Milford, Connecticut. The complaint claims decades of dumping into an unlined landfill, linking PFAS in local wells and rivers to the company’s manufacturing operations. McBreairty v. Kimberly-Clark Corporation (Oct 14, 2025) 3
Key Themes: Liability, Risk, and Allocation
These developments highlight several critical legal issues reshaping PFAS risk:
- Liability Expands Beyond Traditional Producers
Where earlier waves of PFAS suits focused on chemical giants (3M, DuPont, Chemours, etc.), by late 2025, downstream users and consumer-product companies like Kimberly-Clark are being named in contamination claims. These cases underscore how broadly PFAS liability may spread from legacy chemical plants to paper manufacturers and other industrial users.
- Insurance Is Under Strain
As PFAS suits grow in both scale and cost, insurers face deep exposure. Key challenges include:
- Policy Trigger Disputes: Whether PFAS contamination triggers policies on a continuous basis or only at discrete release events could dramatically affect which years and which insurers are on the hook.
- Coverage Carve-Outs and Exclusions: Given PFAS’s unique risks, some insurers are reworking policy language to more narrowly define pollution or product-liability risk.
- Long-Term Liability: Because PFAS persist in the environment (and potentially in the body), their risk is not short-term. Insurers and insureds alike are grappling with legacy policies, reinsurance implications, and how to spread risk across decades.
- Settlement as a Strategic Alternative to Trial
Given the volume of cases and the high stakes, settlement is increasingly attractive to both plaintiffs and defendants. The MDL judge’s push for a pre-trial deal suggests that both sides believe they can better manage risk by bargaining than by litigating to verdict.
Settlements also offer benefits for public water systems and municipalities, who may prefer immediate remediation funding rather than protracted court battles.
- Regulatory Momentum as Litigation Fuel
Political and regulatory pressure is not just background noise. It is a direct driver of litigation strategy. Congressional scrutiny, combined with stricter PFAS standards, raises the cost of noncompliance and accelerates cleanup demands.
For companies, this means that legal risk is closely tied to regulatory risk: court cases may now reflect not just legacy contamination but also enforcement under current and future PFAS rules.
Conclusively, the October–November 2025 window represents more than incremental growth in PFAS litigation. It may well mark the inflection point where forever chemicals become forever liability for a wide array of actors. As more plaintiffs join the fray, insurers recalibrate, and defendants reevaluate exposure, the outcomes of this moment could establish the financial architecture for PFAS accountability for decades to come.
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