3M 2007 Annual Report Download - page 83

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an HBV for PFBA, but the Company expects the MDH to issue further guidance in the first quarter of 2008. The Company
has advised the affected communities that it will assist them in assuring their drinking water falls below the HBV for PFBA
when such value is finally determined.
On May 22, 2007, the MPCA Citizen’s Board approved the Settlement Agreement and Consent Order to address the
presence of perfluorinated compounds in the soil and groundwater at former disposal sites in Washington County
Minnesota and at the Company’s manufacturing facility at Cottage Grove Minnesota. Under this agreement, the
Company agreed to (i) evaluate releases of perfluorinated compounds from these sites and propose response actions;
(ii) provide alternative drinking water if and when an HBV or HRL is exceeded for any perfluorinated compounds as a
result of contamination from these sites; (iii) share information with the MPCA about perfluorinated compounds; (iv)
reimburse the MPCA future costs of research that are connected to releases from the Company’s operations in
Minnesota (the Company agreed to reimburse the MPCA for past research costs and provided a grant up to $5 million
over the next four years for the purpose of investigating and assessing the presence and effects of perflouronated
compounds in the environment and biota); and (v) pay the MPCA up to $8 million towards the implementation of remedial
actions at the Washington County Landfill. The Company is working with the MPCA under the terms of the Settlement
Agreement and Consent Order to propose alternatives that the MPCA will consider to address the presence of
perfluorinated compounds in the soil and groundwater at these sites.
The Company cannot predict what regulatory actions arising from the foregoing proceedings and activities, if any, may be
taken regarding such compounds or the consequences of any such actions.
In February 2008, the EPA notified the Company that it is seeking $173,000 in penalties due to alleged past violations
of certain monitoring and record keeping requirements under federal air pollution regulations at the Company’s
manufacturing facility in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. The Company had been operating under a monitoring and record
keeping approach that had been approved by the MPCA. The EPA has now approved the Company’s alternative
monitoring and record keeping approach.
Litigation: As previously reported, a former employee filed a purported class action lawsuit in 2002 in the Circuit Court of
Morgan County, Alabama, involving perfluorooctanyl chemistry, alleging that the plaintiffs suffered fear, increased risk,
subclinical injuries, and property damage from exposure to perfluorooctanyl chemistry at or near the Company’s Decatur,
Alabama, manufacturing facility. The Circuit Court in 2005 granted the Company’s motion to dismiss the named
plaintiff’s personal injury-related claims on the basis that such claims are barred by the exclusivity provisions of the
state’s Workers Compensation Act. The plaintiffs’ counsel filed an amended complaint in November 2006, limiting the
case to property damage claims on behalf of a purported class of residents and property owners in the vicinity of the
Decatur plant. Also in 2005, the judge in a second purported class action lawsuit (filed by three residents of Morgan
County, Alabama, seeking unstated compensatory and punitive damages involving alleged damage to their property from
emissions of perfluorooctanyl compounds from the Company’s Decatur, Alabama, manufacturing facility that formerly
manufactured those compounds) granted the Company’s motion to abate the case, effectively putting the case on hold
pending the resolution of class certification issues in the action described above filed in the same court in 2002. Despite
the stay, plaintiffs filed an amended complaint seeking damages for alleged personal injuries and property damage on
behalf of the named plaintiffs and the members of a purported class. No further action in the case is expected unless and
until the stay is lifted.
As previously reported, two residents of Washington County, Minnesota, filed in October 2004 a purported class action in
the District Court of Washington County on behalf of Washington county residents who have allegedly suffered personal
injuries and property damage from alleged emissions from the former perfluorooctanyl production facility at Cottage
Grove, Minnesota, and from historic waste disposal sites in the vicinity of that facility. After the District Court granted
the Company’s motion to dismiss the claims for medical monitoring and public nuisance in April 2005, the plaintiffs
filed an amended complaint adding additional allegations involving other perfluorinated compounds manufactured by
the Company, alleging additional legal theories in support of their claims, adding four plaintiffs, and seeking relief
based on alleged contamination of the City of Oakdale municipal water supply and certain private wells in the vicinity
of Lake Elmo, Minnesota. In April 2006, the plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint adding two additional
plaintiffs. The two original plaintiffs thereafter dismissed their claims against the Company. After a hearing on the
plaintiffs’ motion to certify the case as a class action at the end of March 2007, the Court on June 19, 2007 denied the
plaintiffs’ motion to certify the litigation as a class action. The trial of the individual cases is scheduled for January
2009.
Several hundred plaintiffs who claim to have lived in the vicinity of the ACME Barrel Company’s storage drum
reconditioning facility in Chicago, Illinois, filed a lawsuit in the third quarter of 2003 in the Circuit Court of Cook County,
Illinois, against 3M and a number of other companies that allegedly were customers of ACME Barrel. Since the Court
rejected plaintiffs’ attempt to have this litigation proceed as a class action, 71 individuals have asserted claims against the
Company and several other defendants for damages allegedly caused by emissions of hazardous materials from the
ACME Barrel drum reconditioning facility.
In the second quarter of 2006, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection served a lawsuit that was filed in
New Jersey state court against the Company and several other companies seeking cleanup and removal costs and