The People of the State of California v. 3M Co.
The People of the State of California, Acting by and through Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti, and the County of Santa Clara v. 3M Co.
- Virginia Demarchi
- 5:25-cv-03361
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
The People of California v. 3M Co. was conditionally transferred to South Carolina for coordinated pretrial proceedings; the metadata identifies Judge Demarchi.
The People of the State of California, Acting by and through Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti, the County of Santa Clara, 3M Co., and the other parties in the listed tag-along actions were affected by the conditional transfer for coordinated pretrial proceedings.
What happened
The People of the State of California, Acting by and through Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti, and the County of Santa Clara v. 3M Co. was listed as a related action in multidistrict litigation involving aqueous film-forming foams. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation found common factual questions with cases already pending in South Carolina.
The panel conditionally transferred the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. The transfer would become effective when filed in that court, subject to the stated seven-day period for objections.
The supplied case metadata identifies Judge Virginia Demarchi, while the transfer order assigns the transferred actions to Judge Richard M. Gergel in South Carolina. The order was issued by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and did not decide the parties’ underlying claims.
The detailed version
- The People of the State of California v. 3M Co. · No. 5:25-cv-03361
- Virginia Demarchi
- June 16, 2025
Background
The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued Conditional Transfer Order CTO-259 in the multidistrict litigation titled In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2873. The schedule identified this action as a tag-along action from the Northern District of California. The panel said that the action involved factual questions common to actions previously transferred to the District of South Carolina for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.
Ruling
The panel conditionally transferred the action to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina under 28 U.S.C. § 1407. With that court’s consent, the transferred actions were assigned to Judge Richard M. Gergel. The order stated that it would not become effective until filed with the clerk of the District of South Carolina. Transmission of the order was stayed for seven days from entry, and the stay would continue if a party filed an opposition during that period. The order stated that no objection was pending at that time.
Effect
This was a case-management and venue order for coordinated pretrial proceedings, not a decision on liability or any other underlying claim. The supplied case metadata identifies Virginia Demarchi as the judge, but the reproduced order is issued by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and assigns the action to Judge Richard M. Gergel in South Carolina.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.