East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY f/k/a MINNESOTA MINING
- Sallie Kim
- 3:23-cv-00738
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY, Judge Kim’s case was conditionally transferred to South Carolina for coordinated pretrial proceedings.
East Bay Municipal Utility District and the defendants identified in the case caption were affected by the conditional transfer of the action to the District of South Carolina for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings.
What happened
East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY f/k/a MINNESOTA MINING was listed as a tag-along action in multidistrict litigation involving aqueous film-forming foam products liability cases. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation found that the action appeared to share factual questions with cases already transferred to South Carolina.
The Panel conditionally transferred the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina under the federal multidistrict-litigation statute for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. The transfer would become effective when filed with the South Carolina court. The order also stayed transmission for seven days, with a longer stay if a party filed an opposition.
The provided case information identifies Judge Sallie Kim as the judge in East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY. The opinion itself is a Judicial Panel transfer order and assigns the transferred cases to Judge Richard M. Gergel in South Carolina.
The detailed version
- East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY f/k/a MINNESOTA MINING · No. 3:23-cv-00738
- Sallie Kim
- Mar. 13, 2023
Background
The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation issued Conditional Transfer Order CTO-121 in In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2873. The schedule identified East Bay Municipal Utility District v. 3M COMPANY f/k/a MINNESOTA MINING as a tag-along action pending in the Northern District of California.
The Panel stated that the MDL proceedings had been transferred to the District of South Carolina for coordinated or consolidated pretrial proceedings. It further stated that the action on the schedule appeared to involve factual questions common to actions previously transferred there. With the consent of the South Carolina court, the transferred actions had been assigned to Judge Richard M. Gergel.
Ruling
The Panel conditionally transferred the action to the District of South Carolina under 28 U.S.C. § 1407 for the reasons stated in its earlier transfer order and assigned it to Judge Richard M. Gergel. This order did not become effective until it was filed with the clerk of the District of South Carolina. Transmission of the order to that clerk was stayed for seven days after entry. If a party filed a notice of opposition with the Panel’s clerk during that period, the stay would continue until the Panel ordered otherwise.
The order addressed location and coordination of pretrial proceedings; it did not decide the underlying products-liability issues.
Judge and source of information
The supplied case information identifies Sallie Kim as the judge for the Northern District of California case. The opinion text itself is a Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation order, signed by the Panel’s clerk, and states that the transferred actions were assigned in South Carolina to Judge Richard M. Gergel.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.