3M Agrees to Pay $6 Billion to Settle Earplug Lawsuits From US Service Members

American company operating in the main healthcare and work safety, 3M, has agreed to pay $6 billion to settle lawsuits from nearly 250,000 U.S. military veterans and service members who say they experienced hearing loss or other serious injuries after using defective earplugs supplied by 3M.

The settlement, a total of $6 billion consisting of $5 billion in cash and $1 billion in 3M stock, will be paid gradually in full till 2029.

Faulty Earplugs that Lead to Hearing Loss

Veterans and service members allege the company manufactured faulty earplugs that directly resulted in hearing loss and some other lingering effects.

Veteran anecdote

In the article by WAFF, Jessie Posey, who was a National Guardsman, shared his part of the story as one of the 250,000 at the receiving end of this lawsuit. He not only acknowledged the severity of the hearing loss issue, but he also highlighted the pervasiveness of this issue, as the damage done by these defective earplugs could even be overlooked.

“I feel like 95% of all of my friends -- we’re in combat MOS, being infantry -- and everybody deals with the hearing loss,” Posey said. “It’s so common that people don’t think they would have an opportunity for something like this and they just deal with it and they’ll just get their VA rating and they go on about their life and then just complain about it.”

To compensate, each veteran is looking at around $24,000 each to be paid over six years.

3M's Action against the Lawsuit

Statement from 3M

In the official statement, 3M stated, "This agreement is not an admission of liability. The products at issue in this litigation are safe and effective when used properly. 3M is prepared to continue to defend itself in the litigation if certain agreed terms of the settlement agreement are not fulfilled," as they agree for the $6 billion to resolve all claims associated with their Combat Arms Earplug products as well as potential future claims.

About the Earplug

Designed in the late 1990s, 3M created CAEv2 Combat Arms Earplugs so that soldiers would only need one set of earplugs for multiple types of combat situations. The Combat Arms earplugs were manufactured by Aearo Technologies, a company 3M acquired in 2008. They were used by the U.S. military in training and combat from 2003 to 2015, including deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Continuous Lawsuit

According to "3M Defective Combat Earplugs Settlement" by  Lacy Katzen LLP, a competing company with 3M filed a whistleblower lawsuit against 3M, claiming that they supplied earplugs that they knew to not meet the military safety standards from 2003 to 2015. At the time, 3M paid the government $9.1 million for this claim alone, while declining these claims of the faulty earplugs. After that, many veterans who used these earplugs and suffered from hearing loss started to sue 3M. They claimed that 3M did not inform them about the potential problems with the earplugs and didn't provide them with the right instructions they 3M claimed to do.

3M attempted to escape the situation, by attempting to file for bankruptcy for its subsidiary who initially manufactured these earplugs. If the bankruptcy went through, all the claims would have been moved to the bankruptcy court. The presiding judge declined and stated that it was a “brazen abuse of the litigation process”.

As a result, a lawsuit against 3M proceeded. As of June 15, 2024, 336,995 lawsuits have been filed with over 250,00 still pending according to the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, which will be the largest mass tort claim in U.S history. In this process, 3M has lost 10 of the 16 cases that have gone to trial; with about $265 million being awarded to plaintiffs.

Other Problems Ahead

3M has other lawsuits at hand. According to a statement by 3M, they agreed on the present value commitment of up to $10.3 billion payable over 13 years, to settle lawsuits over the contamination of many U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially harmful compounds.

Per- and polyfluorinated substances, known collectively as PFAS, are also described as “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade naturally in the environment, similar to plastic. PFAS can cause some severe health consequences, like liver and immune-system damage and some potential cancers.

This fee will be used to clean up the PFAS around the US upon the approval of the court, and this number is likely going to be a lot higher. Similar to the earplug lawsuit, 3M refuses to admit any liability, but these lawsuits raised concerns about the company financially going forward.