3M AFFF Settlement: $7.35 Billion, Six Conditions, No Claim Form

3M signed a master settlement agreement on November 3, 2026 covering personal injury claims in the federal AFFF firefighting foam litigation, pledging a nominal maximum of $7.35 billion through 2034. The agreement, filed with the SEC, reaches six listed conditions, releases only 3M and its related parties, and remains terminable.

Information last verified on November 9, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Scope of this article: it covers the 3M personal injury Master Settlement Agreement dated November 3, 2026 in In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2873, in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, as filed with the SEC. It does not cover 3M's 2023 resolution with public water suppliers, its separate New Jersey settlement, claims against any other foam defendant, or the injury law of any single state. For the underlying case, see our standing coverage of the firefighting foam litigation.

What Happened

On November 3, 2026, 3M Company and the four undersigned negotiating plaintiffs' counsel executed a Master Settlement Agreement in MDL No. 2873, case number 2:18-mn-2873, in the District of South Carolina, acting on behalf of eligible claimants as authorized by the MDL court's Case Management Order 2B. 3M filed it the next day on Form 8-K under Items 1.01, 8.01 and 9.01, with the agreement as Exhibit 10.1, a payment schedule as Exhibit 10.1A and a press release as Exhibit 99.1.

EDGAR gives the filing an accession number of 0000066740-26-000318, an acceptance timestamp of November 3, 2026 at 18:03 and an official filing date of November 4, 2026. The signatories for the plaintiffs' side are Michael A. London of Douglas and London and Scott Summy of Baron and Budd, who are the MDL court's appointed lead counsel, together with Fred Thompson of Motley Rice and Hunter J. Shkolnik of Napoli Shkolnik. Steven F. Reich signed for 3M, with Thomas J. Perrelli of Jenner and Block as counsel.

The headline figure appears in Item 1.01, and the qualifier that follows it matters as much as the number.

3M will contribute a total nominal amount of $7.35 billion between 2026 and 2034. The actual amount, payment terms, and dates are subject to satisfaction of certain participation thresholds claimants must meet.

Source: 3M Company, Form 8-K, SEC Accession No. 0000066740-26-000318, Item 1.01.

Item 8.01 adds the accounting consequence: a pre-tax charge of approximately $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2026, which the filing describes as the present value of contributions under the settlement. 3M states that the settlement provides it does not admit any liability or wrongdoing.

The filed payment schedule shows where the $7.35 billion would go and when. It lists a $50 million initial payment within 30 days of the November 3 signing date, then six installments of $1.045 billion each, the first no earlier than January 15, 2028 and the last no earlier than July 15, 2033, plus two possible $125 million participation-threshold payments, two possible $50 million bonus payments, and a reserve fund capped at $680 million paid out in up to six tranches between April 2029 and April 2034. Those components add to exactly $7.35 billion, which is the point: the headline is the sum of every line going right, not a pot of money sitting somewhere.

Each row of that schedule sits under a column headed "maximum amount and description", and the schedule states that all payments other than the initial $50 million are contingent on no party exercising termination rights.

The agreement's own recitals describe the scale of the litigation it is trying to close: an MDL established by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation on December 7, 2018 that now involves over 15,000 cases and, by the agreement's count, roughly 115,000 to 120,000 plaintiffs asserting qualifying personal injury claims. 3M's press release goes further and says the deal addresses approximately 99 percent of current personal injury claims inside and outside the MDL. Both of those figures are characterizations by the parties to the deal, not findings by anyone else, and the participation that would make them true has not happened yet.

What the Settlement Covers, and What It Does Not

The agreement defines "eligible injury" in one sentence, and that sentence is the real scope of the deal.

Kidney cancer, testicular cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, ulcerative colitis, or thyroid disease.

Source: Master Settlement Agreement, Nov. 3, 2026, Art. 1, definition of Eligible Injury (SEC Ex. 10.1).

Nothing else qualifies. The agreement explains where the list came from: under the MDL court's Case Management Order 28 the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee was required to identify the conditions that current science supports associating with PFAS exposure, and the agreement records that the committee named only these six and that the negotiating counsel reaffirm that position as of the signing date. Participating counsel also affirm that current science does not support an association between PFAS exposure and any condition outside the list.

Property damage is treated as an add-on, not a claim type. The agreement covers an "accompanying property damage claim" only where the same person also asserts a personal injury claim involving one of the six conditions, and it says expressly that a property or business damage claim brought by a plaintiff without such an injury claim is not an accompanying property damage claim for settlement purposes. A reader with a contaminated well and no listed diagnosis is not inside this agreement.

Now the asymmetry that deserves the most attention. Eligibility is narrow, but the release a participant signs is wide. "Released claims" reaches any claim a releasing party ever had, has now, or may ever have against a released party that results from, relates to or involves PFAS, and the definition walks through personal injury, future injury, property and business losses, medical monitoring, consumer protection claims, wrongful death, punitive damages and attorneys' fees. Participants also waive any right to punitive damages from the released parties.

So a person who qualifies through thyroid disease and participates does not release a thyroid-disease claim. They release their PFAS claims against 3M, including ones they have not brought and injuries they do not yet have.

No Claim Form Exists Yet, and That Is Why the Headline Is Dangerous

As of November 9, 2026 there is no public claim form for this settlement and no published deadline for any individual claimant. There is also no claims portal open, in the specific sense the agreement uses: the claims administrator is to give each eligible claimant access to a Claims Portal, carrying the registration package and claim package, only within 28 days of a final identification report. A different portal does already exist, and it is worth knowing what it is. The agreement defines the Portal as the web interface created to exchange information between the parties and the administrators in the MDL, established by a court order dated December 5, 2024, and gives its address as afffmdlportal.com. That is where identification responses are filed, including by a claimant with no lawyer. It is not a public claim-filing site, and it returned an access error when we tried it.

The sequence starts with a court order and with lawyers, and for a represented claimant it does not start with them at all. The agreement asks the MDL court to enter an Identification Order and anticipates that it will issue on or about November 3, 2026, and it provides that the order will require each primary counsel to file an identification response and a sworn declaration within ten days of that date, listing every client with a qualifying injury whether or not the client has a filed case and whether or not the client intends to participate.

Only then do the claimant-facing steps begin. The court-appointed claims administrator issues an initial identification report 15 days after responses are due, counsel get seven days to correct their portion, a de-duplication step runs at 21 days, and after any challenge the administrator issues a final report. Within 28 days of that final report the administrator is to open the claims portal and issue estimated allocation tables. A registration package is then due 98 days after that issuance date, with a 28-day cure period that sets the initial registration date at day 126, and a complete claim package is due on the same 126-day clock, with an outside limit of 217 days.

Every one of those claimant-facing deadlines counts forward from the identification order and the reports that follow it, and we could not confirm from public sources whether that order has been entered. Its anticipated date, on or about November 3, 2026, has already passed, so the possibility that a clock is running cannot be ruled out. The dated items printed in the agreement all belong to 3M or to the lawyers: the payment schedule's earliest payment dates, themselves contingent on nobody terminating, two participation-threshold deadlines of December 15, 2028 and December 15, 2029, and a final distribution date of December 31, 2034. None of those is a date by which an individual claimant must do anything.

That gap between a $7.35 billion headline and a process with no public entry point is exactly the space that fraudulent and misleading claim sites occupy. Writing about an earlier large settlement, the Federal Trade Commission warned that people may already have started putting up fake websites meant to look like the official claims site, that claimants would never have to pay to file a claim for that settlement's benefits, and that anyone who calls trying to get you to file is almost certainly a scammer. In this agreement the only charge placed on a claimant is a $1,000 application fee for the Extraordinary Needs Fund, and even that is deducted from an award rather than paid up front, so a site asking you for money to file is not operating under this settlement. If you want to know what that pattern looks like in general, read how fake claim and refund sites operate.

There is a second signal worth knowing about. Under Article 8, plaintiffs' counsel with an interest in a participating claimant affirm that they will cease advertising and marketing for PFAS personal injury claims as of November 3, 2026, including taking down advertising that predates that date. Marketing for these claims that appears after it is not coming from counsel bound by that affirmation.

How the Deal Can Still Fall Apart

Both sides hold a termination right, each exercisable in its holder's sole discretion if conditions set out in Confidential Exhibit 12 are met. Those conditions are participation levels, and the numbers are not public: the agreement's confidentiality clause specifically bars disclosing the contents of Confidential Exhibit 12, and the calculation rules sit in Exhibit 13, which was also not filed.

The clock is driven by the count. The claims administrator computes the number of participating claimants, an overall participation rate and a specific participation rate keyed to kidney and testicular cancer claims with heavier exposure, starting 15 days after the later of the claim package deadline or a court ruling dismissing non-responding plaintiffs. Each side then has 45 days from receiving those numbers to exercise or waive, with one 15-day extension available. December 15, 2029 is the last date on which the plaintiffs' side can earn the third participation-threshold payment, and the outer limit for the administrator's recurring count. The levels that actually control termination sit in Confidential Exhibit 12 and carry no public date beyond that 45-day exercise window.

If either side terminates, the personal injury cases against 3M stay stayed and the parties go into a 75-day mediation with the MDL mediator. If that fails, the settlement ends, 3M has no further obligation, the claims administrator destroys every executed release and stipulated dismissal, and whatever is left of the initial $50 million goes back to 3M with interest. Nothing in the public record tells anyone how likely that is, and we will not guess.

Two consequences follow for individuals, and both cut against waiting passively. An election form, once submitted with its release and dismissal, is binding and irrevocable except by consent of both sides. And a participant who signs the release but never completes a claim package does not get their claim back: the agreement states that such a claimant may not proceed to allocation, while their release and stipulated dismissal remain valid and go to 3M if nobody terminates.

Doing nothing is not neutral either. An eligible claimant on the final identification report who never submits an election form becomes a "non-responding plaintiff", and the agreement has both sides jointly move the MDL court for an order to show cause why that person's claims should not be dismissed with prejudice.

Who Is Not Released

The released parties are 3M, its affiliates, successors, insurers, officers and agents, and also every person or entity that 3M indemnifies for a PFAS claim by contract or common law, minus an excluded list in Exhibit 9 that was not filed. The agreement instructs that this definition be read as broadly as possible.

What it does not do is release any other foam defendant by name. The agreement is between 3M and plaintiffs' counsel, and it names no other defendant anywhere. But the indemnitee limb reaches whoever 3M indemnifies for a PFAS claim, and the Exhibit 9 exclusion list was not filed, so the public record does not establish whether any particular co-defendant sits inside or outside the release. That is a question for a lawyer with the file, not one this filing answers.

More to the point for anyone reading coverage of this deal: the master agreement, the Form 8-K and the press release do not mention DuPont, Chemours, Corteva, Tyco, Johnson Controls, BASF or Kidde-Fenwal even once. We checked all three documents for each name. That means this filing establishes nothing at all about where any other defendant stands, and any claim about their status has to come from somewhere else.

The agreement does contain 3M's framing of the point. In Article 18 the negotiating counsel acknowledge that 3M stopped making the PFAS compounds used in foam more than 20 years ago while other companies continued for years afterward, and that 3M's share of alleged liability will decline over time while the responsibility of other defendants and potential other parties increases. That is a negotiated recital in 3M's favor, not a judicial finding.

What the Law Actually Says

This settlement sits inside a federal multidistrict litigation, and the distinction between an MDL and a class action is the single most useful thing a reader can take from the law here. Under 28 U.S.C. section 1407(a), when civil actions sharing common questions of fact are pending in different districts, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation may transfer them to one district for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings, and each transferred action is to be remanded to its original district at or before the end of pretrial proceedings unless it has been terminated. An MDL consolidates separate lawsuits for pretrial handling. It does not merge them into one representative claim.

That is why this document reads the way it does. Section 12.1.1 of the agreement says, in five words, what it is.

This is a private agreement.

Source: Master Settlement Agreement, Nov. 3, 2026, s. 12.1.1 (SEC Ex. 10.1).

We searched the roughly 192,000 characters of text in the filed agreement for "preliminary approval", "final approval", "court approval", "fairness hearing" and "Rule 23". There are no occurrences of any of them. This is a private inventory-style resolution built on individual releases and stipulated dismissals, not a Rule 23 class settlement, so there is no approval hearing described in the agreement we reviewed and no class notice period, objection right or opt-out window of the kind a class settlement carries.

That is emphatically not the same as saying no court is involved. The agreement asks the MDL court to enter an identification order, refers to an anticipated Case Management Order 40 governing non-settling plaintiffs, and conditions the reserve fund on that order remaining in effect. It submits named administrators for court appointment: Dustin Mire of Eisner Advisory Group as claims administrator, Matthew L. Garretson of Garretson LLC as settlement administrator and administrator of the qualified settlement fund, and retired Judge R. David Proctor as settlement special master and appeals administrator. South Carolina substantive law governs, and the MDL court retains jurisdiction to enforce the agreement, including by injunction under the All Writs Act.

Whether any of those orders has actually been entered, we cannot say. The District of South Carolina's public MDL 2873 order repository states on its face that it is not a complete inventory of all decisions, and the case management orders it lists stop in the CMO 38 range, with the official record available only through ECF and PACER. We report that as unknown rather than as absent.

Three other bodies of standing law shape what a participant actually receives. Participating claimants remain responsible for Medicare, Medicaid and other liens, and the agreement requires the information needed for mandatory insurer reporting under 42 U.S.C. section 1395y(b)(8). Payments are characterized as damages for personal physical injuries or physical sickness within the meaning of section 104(a)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code, with the agreement disclaiming any tax representation. And fees come off the top twice over: individual contingency agreements between lawyer and client are untouched, while the agreement contemplates a nine percent common benefit assessment, inclusive of costs, held back from settlement distributions under the MDL court's Case Management Order 3.

Payment order matters too. Participants are paid pro rata out of whatever is in the fund, in two tranches, with tranche one paid in full before tranche two begins. Tranche one is defined partly by a date already in the past: having timely submitted a substantially complete amended personal injury fact sheet or plaintiff profile form before December 15, 2025.

For how this matter fits the broader landscape, see the other active mass tort matters we follow. One comparison readers reach for is worth correcting at the source: this agreement has nothing to say about the Camp Lejeune water contamination claims. The phrase Camp Lejeune does not appear in the master agreement, the Form 8-K or the press release, and this release is defined by PFAS and by the identity of the released party, not by any installation or water system.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The structural feature of this deal is that almost everything a claimant would need to evaluate it is not public. Sixteen exhibits are incorporated into the agreement, covering allocation procedures, the release, the election form, the excluded-entities list, the single exhibit the agreement styles confidential, which carries the termination conditions and the threshold percentages, and the unfiled exhibit holding the calculation rules. Exactly one of them was filed: the payment schedule. The document that tells a person with thyroid cancer what their claim is worth, and the document that says how many people must sign for the deal to survive, are both outside public view.

Layer the confidentiality terms on top. Participating claimants agree not to state their allocated or enhancement award amounts to anyone beyond family and financial or tax advisers, including on any website, forum or social platform. The agreement also contains a non-disparagement clause binding claimants, their counsel and 3M's officers, with a commitment to make reasonable efforts to take down earlier social media posts that would breach it. The practical effect is that the usual way information about a mass settlement reaches the public, claimants comparing notes, is contractually closed.

That is lawful and it is common in private inventory settlements. It also means the public record on this settlement will stay thin for a long time, and thin public records are where invented numbers thrive. When a $7.35 billion figure is in every headline and no official per-person figure exists anywhere, the vacuum gets filled by whoever wants to fill it.

The second thing worth naming is the inversion at the center of the deal. The gateway is six conditions chosen because, on the parties' own account of the science as of November 2026, those are the ones the evidence supports. The exit is a release of all PFAS claims against 3M, forever, including conditions outside the six and injuries that have not appeared. A claimant trades an uncertain claim on a narrow list for certainty on a wide one. Whether that is a good trade is a judgment that depends on an allocation table nobody outside the process has seen, which is precisely why the agreement routes the decision through a lawyer who owes that individual a duty.

Third, the financing structure is doing real work. The schedule puts nothing in 2027, defers the first large installment to 2028 at the earliest, and back-loads roughly a fifth of the money into the final two years, which 3M says aligns with its other legacy obligations. The agreement adds protective covenants: a solvency or fairness opinion requirement before large asset transfers, notice rights enforceable by plaintiffs' counsel, and bankruptcy provisions restoring claimants to their pre-settlement position if the agreement is not assumed in a reorganization. Those are the terms of a party planning to pay over nine years, and they are also a reminder that a promise stretching to 2034 is not the same as money received.

What we are not going to do is predict. The thresholds are confidential, the counting has not started, and both sides can walk. Any confident statement right now about whether this settlement takes effect is not analysis.

How This Affects You

If you are already a plaintiff in MDL 2873 or already represented in a PFAS personal injury claim, the first step in this process runs through your own lawyer, not through you, and the agreement puts that step within ten days of November 3, 2026 if the court has entered the identification order the agreement anticipates. The right move is to contact your counsel and ask where you stand on the identification response and what the election choices would mean for you. We cannot tell you what to choose, and nobody who has not read your file can.

If you have one of the six listed conditions and have never retained a lawyer or filed anything, do not assume you are outside this process and that there is nothing to do. The agreement treats an eligible claimant as including someone whose claim was never filed in any court, and it provides a route for a claimant with no lawyer: a pro se eligible claimant may submit an identification response through the portal or by email to the claims administrator, plaintiffs' negotiating counsel and 3M, and is to do so within ten days of the identification order's issuance. We could not confirm that the order has issued, and the portal returned an access error to us, so we cannot tell you that route is usable today. Three things narrow it in any case. An eligible claimant who is not on the final identification report may participate only if both sides consent. The participating lawyers affirmed that they have no present intent to take on new PFAS personal injury claims. And 3M's press release describes an anticipated court order setting evidentiary and timing requirements for plaintiffs who may seek to litigate in the future. Because that ten-day clock may already have run, this is a question to put to a lawyer rather than one to leave sitting.

If your situation is a contaminated well, lost property value or a business loss with no listed diagnosis, this agreement is not addressed to you. Claims by public water suppliers were resolved separately in 2023 by a different settlement that this one does not touch.

If a family member with one of the listed conditions has died, the agreement contemplates a decedent attestation with a death certificate and estate information, and it requires a court-appointed representative to execute the release where the allocation reaches $75,000 or more. That is an estate-law question in the decedent's own state, and it is one to raise with counsel early rather than at a deadline.

And whoever you are: no claim portal for this settlement is open to the public as of November 9, 2026, and the filing publishes no per-person amount. A site that offers to check your eligibility, asks for a fee, or promises a figure is not drawing that from the filing, because the filing contains no such figure.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers federal multidistrict litigation in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina and reflects sources verified on November 9, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• AFFF Firefighting Foam Lawsuit: Status and Claims
• Active mass tort and product liability cases
• Camp Lejeune water contamination lawsuits
• Spotting scams and fraudulent claim sites

Last updated: 2026-11-09. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-11-09.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a claim form for the 3M AFFF settlement?

Not as of November 9, 2026. The agreement has the claims administrator give each eligible claimant access to a Claims Portal, holding the registration package and claim package, within 28 days of a final identification report, and that report depends on an identification order whose entry we could not confirm from public sources. The MDL's existing information portal at afffmdlportal.com is not a claim-filing site for this settlement.

What is the deadline to file an AFFF settlement claim?

No per-claimant deadline has been publicly published. The registration and claim-package clocks run from the estimated allocation issuance date, which has not happened. The first clock, though, runs from the court's identification order, which the agreement anticipated on or about November 3, 2026: counsel identification responses fall due ten days after the settlement date, and an unrepresented claimant's response ten days after the order issues. We could not confirm whether that order has been entered, so do not assume nothing is running. The dated items printed in the document belong to 3M and the lawyers: the earliest payment dates, participation deadlines of December 15, 2028 and December 15, 2029, and a final distribution date of December 31, 2034.

How much money will each person get?

The public filing states no per-person amount. The allocation procedures are Exhibit 1 to the agreement and were not filed with the Form 8-K, and participating claimants agree not to disclose their award amounts publicly. Any specific figure circulating now is not sourced to the filing.

Which illnesses does the settlement cover?

The agreement defines eligible injury as kidney cancer, testicular cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, ulcerative colitis, or thyroid disease. It records that this list came from the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee's response to the MDL court's Case Management Order 28 on which conditions current science supports associating with PFAS exposure.

Does it cover property damage or a contaminated private well?

Only alongside a qualifying personal injury claim. The agreement says a property or business damage claim brought by a plaintiff who does not also assert a listed injury is not covered. Claims by United States public water suppliers were resolved in a separate 2023 settlement that this agreement does not touch.

Does this settle claims against DuPont, Tyco or other foam makers?

The release runs to 3M and a broadly defined group of related parties, including entities 3M indemnifies, with an exclusion list that was not filed. No other foam defendant is named anywhere in the agreement, the Form 8-K or the press release. Because the release reaches whoever 3M indemnifies for a PFAS claim and the exclusion list was not filed, the public documents do not show whether a given co-defendant sits inside or outside it, and they say nothing about its own litigation status.

Is there a fairness hearing where someone can object?

The agreement describes none. Section 12.1.1 states that it is a private agreement, and a search of the filed text returns no occurrence of preliminary approval, final approval, court approval, fairness hearing or Rule 23. The MDL court is still involved through orders and administrator appointments, and whether any of those orders has been entered is unknown to us.

What happens to someone in the MDL who does nothing?

The agreement treats an eligible claimant on the final identification report who never submits an election form as a non-responding plaintiff, and it has both sides jointly move the MDL court for an order to show cause why that person's claims should not be dismissed with prejudice.

Is the 3M AFFF settlement final?

No. Both 3M and the negotiating plaintiffs' counsel hold a termination right exercisable in sole discretion if confidential participation conditions are met, within 45 days of receiving the participation count plus one 15-day extension. If it terminates after a 75-day mediation fails, executed releases are destroyed and 3M has no further obligation.

Are websites offering an AFFF eligibility check official?

No official public claim route exists for this settlement yet, so no site can be the official one today. Writing about an earlier large settlement, the Federal Trade Commission warned that people may put up fake sites built to look like the official claims page, that claimants would never have to pay to file a claim for that settlement's benefits, and that a caller pushing you to file is almost certainly a scammer. Under this agreement the only fee charged to a claimant is a $1,000 Extraordinary Needs Fund application fee deducted from an award, so anyone asking you to pay to file is not part of this process.