Firefighting gear manufacturers can’t duck Montana suit over PFAS
Quinn Welsch
(CN) — A federal judge cleared the way on Tuesday for a class action accusing chemical and firefighter equipment manufacturers of conspiring for decades to hide the dangers of their products.
U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, a Barack Obama appointee, declined to dismiss the suit by Butte-Silver Bow, a consolidated city-county government in Montana, despite efforts by the defendants, including the 3M Company, DuPont and Globe Manufacturing Company, among others, to shut it down.
In its April 2025 suit, the plaintiff claims that the firefighter “turnout gear” — the protective pants and jackets used to fight fires — contains dangerous PFAS chemicals that are linked to various cancers and diseases. It further accuses the defendants of colluding and deliberately concealing exposure of these chemical contaminants, sometimes called “forever chemicals," in the firefighter gear.
In his ruling, Morris concluded that the plaintiff sufficiently claimed civil violations under the RICO Act.
“Defendants could not have achieved their goals of selling PFAS and turnout gear containing PFAS if defendants’ knowledge of the harms of PFAS had been exposed,” Morris wrote. “These actions by defendants, allegedly acting together to conceal the known dangers of PFAS, do not constitute merely normal or ordinary commercial relationships. These allegations indicate a continuing effort of concealment by defendants.”
The defendants argued that Butte-Silver Bow lacked standing on their claims, that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the defendants failed to state a claim. Alternatively, they asked the court to stay the action under the first-to-file rule, pending a related federal case in Connecticut.
Morris disputed those arguments and declined to stay the case.
“The court declines to exercise its discretion to apply the first-to-file rule under these specific circumstances,” he wrote. “Judicial efficiency and the interests of justice would be better served by maintaining this pending action in the District of Montana.”
Furthermore, the court had jurisdiction over the case, Morris wrote.
“Defendants’ products did not enter Montana randomly through the stream of commerce,” he wrote. “Defendants made efforts to market, sell, and advertise their products into Montana. Defendants conduct establishes contacts expressly aimed at the forum state, not merely contacts that were ‘random, fortuitous, or attenuated.’”
Butte-Silver Bow claims that the PFAS chemicals are embedded into the firefighter turnout gear during the manufacturing process.
“Firefighters are exposed to PFAS from turnout gear through dermal exposure, the shedding of PFAS during normal use and aging of turnout gear,” it said in the original complaint. “Firefighters are developing cancer at an alarming rate higher than the general population. Firefighter occupational cancer is the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths in the fire service.”
According to the International Association of Fire Fighters, cancer caused 66% of career firefighter line-of-duty deaths between 2002 and 2019.
A study by the American Cancer Society last year reported that firefighters showed an increased risk for most cancers, but that the risk was greatest for skin and kidney cancers.
“We are well aware of the hurdles we face in this lawsuit and are pleased to begin our fight with this massive victory for firefighters and their districts saddled with high costs of replacement gear to keep them safe,” said the plaintiff’s attorney Steve Berman, a partner at Hagens Berman, in a statement Tuesday. “Municipalities like the city and county of Butte-Silver Bow have shouldered this burden unfairly, and we are ready to see this case through to a just result.”
Butte-Silver Bow accused 3M and Chemours of manufacturing, distributing and marketing PFAS chemicals to Globe Manufacturing Company, W.L. Gore & Associates and the Lion Group, which manufacture the firefighter gear. The defendants sold the PFAS-infused gear to various public entities for decades without disclosing its toxicity, according to Butte-Silver Bow in the complaint.
Butte-Silver Bow claimed that the turnout gear, not including a respirator, costs around $3,000 per suit, with many departments providing two suits per firefighter. Compensation for the approximately 1 million firefighters in the U.S. would run into the billions, it says.
Representatives of the defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.