Attorney General Bonta Files Second Amended Complaint in PFAS Litigation Alleging New Fraudulent Transfers by DuPont Defendants

The first-of-its-kind amended lawsuit seeks to hold DuPont defendants' MOU and MOU amendment as fraudulent transfers

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed a Second Amended Complaint in his existing lawsuit against some of nation’s largest chemical companies. The Second Amended Complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, alleges new wrongful conduct as part of the continuing fraudulent transaction scheme that New DuPont, Corteva, Chemours, and the recently created Qnity Electronics (DuPont Defendants) engaged in. The amendments allege that the transactions violated the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act and that they are designed to evade accountability over PFAS claims and liabilities through fraudulent corporate restructuring and asset transfers. Specifically, the companies entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) designed to shift the overwhelming majority of liabilities onto Chemours (the company with the least amount of assets) and to limit the liability of Corteva, New DuPont and Qnity. Incredibly, this MOU was amended recently to further diminish the assets of Chemours by taking away potentially important insurance coverage and transferring it elsewhere.

In November 2022, Attorney General Bonta filed a lawsuit alleging that the manufacturers knew or should have known about the dangers of PFAS when they made and/or sold products containing them and that the manufacturers failed to warn about the dangers of PFAS, and in many cases concealed them. The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, damages, penalties, restitution, and abatement. Requested relief includes statewide treatment and destruction of PFAS, including, but not limited to, the treatment of drinking water by regulated water systems; water drawn from private wells and unregulated systems used for drinking water and irrigation; and water from wastewater treatment plants and systems. The lawsuit also seeks payment of funds necessary to mitigate the impacts to human health and the environment through environmental testing, medical monitoring, public noticing, replacement water (for the period between testing and installation of treatment), and safe disposal and destruction. The lawsuit is pending in a multidistrict litigation in the District of South Carolina. 

“The DuPont Defendants cannot game the system by illegally moving assets out of reach, dodging liabilities for the harm they have caused, and calling it restructuring,” said Attorney General Bonta. “I look forward to ensuring that these companies are held accountable for PFAS pollution and that their assets cannot be hidden behind corporate walls while their responsibilities are left behind.”

PFAS Liability Allegations

PFAS are a class of thousands of toxic chemicals. This lawsuit concerns eight PFAS that have been widely detected in drinking water supplies, surface waters, and groundwater in California, as well as air, soil, sediments, and fish tissue and other organisms: perfluorooctanoic acid (“PFOA”); perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (“PFOS”); perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (“PFBS”); perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (“PFHxS”); perfluorohexanoic acid (“PFHxA”); perfluoroheptanoic acid (“PFHpA”); perfluorononanoic acid (“PFNA”), and hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (“HFPO-DA,” also known as “GenX”).

PFAS are widely used in consumer products, including food packaging, cookware, clothing, carpets, shoes, fabrics, polishes, waxes, paints, and cleaning products, as well as in firefighting foams designed to quickly smother liquid fuel fires. These so-called “forever chemicals” are stable in the environment, resistant to degradation, persistent in soil, and known to leach into groundwater. 

PFAS have been found in the blood of nearly all Californians tested for these dangerous chemicals. Human exposure to PFAS can occur from contaminated air, water, soil, food, and consumer products. People who work or live at or near military bases, airports, industrial facilities, and local fire departments, where firefighting foam was used, are particularly likely to have been exposed to dangerous levels of PFAS contaminants. PFAS can cause adverse health impacts including developmental defects, liver, kidney, testicular, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancers, adverse pregnancy outcomes, infertility, reduced bone density in children, and impacts on the thyroid and immune system. Exposure to PFOA and PFOS also limits the effectiveness of common vaccines. 

For decades, PFAS manufacturers were aware of these chemicals’ toxicity, persistence, and prevalence in humans, but chose to deliberately mislead the government and the public. For example, as early as the 1950s, 3M and DuPont began testing the physiological and toxicological properties of PFAS. Based on these internal studies, the manufacturers knew that PFAS were toxic to humans and the environment. By the 1960s, the manufacturers had confirmed that PFAS were leaching into groundwater and contaminating the environment, and by the 1970s, they had confirmed that PFAS bioaccumulate in humans. 

Today, PFAS are pervasive in California. Data from the State Water Resources Control Board shows that PFAS are in drinking, ground, and surface waters, with especially high levels near airports, refineries, chrome plating facilities, military facilities, and landfills. PFAS have been detected in at least 146 public water systems serving 16 million Californians. These chemicals are also present in aquifers that provide millions of Californians with water through unregulated domestic wells.

Corporate Restructuring to Avoid PFAS Liabilities 

In the Second Amended Complaint, Attorney General Bonta lays out the details of Old DuPont (E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company – the company that existed prior to 2017), New DuPont, and Corteva engaging in a continuing series of fraudulent transfers in an attempt to evade creditors, like California, by covering up the transfer of valuable assets from Chemours, a spin off Old DuPont created. These transactions were performed with the real intent to hinder, delay, and defraud creditors or future creditors. 

In 2025, Chemours assigned Corteva and New DuPont (DuPont de Nemours, Inc. – created in June 2019) 100% of its rights to receive insurance proceeds from PFAS-related liabilities in exchange for a lump sum amount worth less than half the estimated value of those proceeds. Chemours will be entitled to a 50% share of further insurance proceeds once Corteva and New DuPont recoup that lump sum, plus a fee, yet Chemours will nonetheless be responsible for indemnifying Corteva, Old DuPont, and New DuPont for all PFAS liabilities above the $4 billion cap set by the 2021 agreement. These agreements have transferred valuable assets away from Chemours in a flagrant attempt to put them out of reach of creditors like California. Meanwhile, New DuPont, holding substantial tangible assets once belonging to Old DuPont, has continued the project of shedding those assets through divestiture transactions, including by spinning off its electronics business into an independent, publicly traded company: Qnity. 

Allegations Against DuPont Defendants 

In the Second Amended Complaint, Attorney General Bonta alleges that the companies knew early on that PFAS were toxic, persistent, and accumulated in humans, plants, and animals, yet hid this information from the public. Attorney General Bonta also alleges that the companies violated California laws by producing, marketing, and selling products containing chemicals they knew to be harmful to Californians’ health and the environment for decades. In addition, Attorney General Bonta is seeking injunctive relief, damages, penalties, restitution, and abatement.

Separately, Attorney General Bonta also alleges the DuPont Defendants engaged in fraudulent transfers, as detailed above, where illegal corporate restructuring was used to hide assets in violation of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act. Attorney General Bonta asks the Court to enjoin New DuPont and Qnity from distributing, transferring, capitalizing, or otherwise transferring any proceeds from the sale of any business lines, segments, divisions, or other assets that formerly belonged to Old DuPont and/or impose a constructive trust over any proceeds from the sale of Old DuPont assets.

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