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On April 23, 2025, the federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia approved the first class settlement to provide temporary, clean drinking water for Summerville, Georgia water customers. The case, brought by Plaintiff Earl Parris, Jr. in 2021, on behalf of himself and a proposed class of Summerville water users, has shown that Summerville’s drinking water is contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have migrated from farm fields into the Raccoon Creek watershed where Summerville draws its drinking water. The levels of two specific PFAS chemicals in the City’s drinking water – PFOA and PFOS – are currently several times higher than the EPA safe drinking water levels. The chemicals were used at the Mount Vernon Mills textile mill in the Town of Trion, Georgia, and discharged to the Trion wastewater treatment plant, which spread the sludge from the wastewater facility onto farm fields in the area.

Under this initial settlement with one of several defendants in the case, a temporary drinking water fund will be created with $1 million provided specifically by Pulcra Chemicals, LLC, so that clean bottled water or under-sink filters can be provided to current Summerville water customers. The Fund will be established in the next two weeks, and the contract for water deliveries and under-sink filters will be coordinated by a Settlement Administrator. Water users will be notified of how to request the bottled water or under-sink filter, which will be free to all eligible users.

Two other class settlements have been preliminarily approved to expand the drinking water fund, with the goal of providing clean drinking water to Summerville water users until the city has constructed a new, permanent drinking water treatment system that will remove PFOA and PFOS. Other settlements, with defendants Huntsman International, LLC, Mount Vernon Mills, Inc., and the Town of Trion, will be considered for final approval by the Court in June.

The City of Summerville has also settled with Pulcra. Proceeds of the City’s settlement with Pulcra will go towards assisting the City with moving forward with engineering design, and ultimately the construction, of permanent improvements to remove PFOA and PFOS and other PFAS chemicals from the City’s drinking water and/or wastewater systems.

Earl Parris, Jr., the plaintiff and class representative, is a former Summerville City Council member, who has been seeking clean water for Summerville since filing the class action lawsuit in 2021. He stated, “we are extremely happy to have accomplished the first step in court today. The people of Summerville should not have to drink water with toxic PFAS, and we will continue fighting until the chemical companies who profited from their use remove them from our drinking water.”

Gary Davis of Davis, Johnston, & Ringger has represented Mr. Parris and the proposed class since the inception of the lawsuit in 2021, and the firm is proud to have achieved this landmark victory for the citizens of Summerville.

In 2024, Davis, Johnston, & Ringger partners Gary Davis and Billy Ringger, along with colleague Jeff Friedman, were honored as national finalists for the “Trial Lawyer of the Year Award” presented by the organization Public Justice at its annual Gala and Awards Presentation in Nashville, Tennessee. Public Justice is a national nonprofit legal advocacy organization that takes on the biggest systemic threats to justice of our time, including abusive corporate power, assault on civil rights and liberties, and destruction of earth’s sustainability. Each year, the organization presents its “Trial Lawyer of the Year Award” to the trial attorney or legal team who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a socially significant case.

Attorneys Davis, Ringger, and Friedman were honored as finalists for this award for their roles in representing the hundreds of workers sickened by unprotected exposure to coal ash during remediation of the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Coal Ash Spill – the largest industrial disaster in United States history.  Over the course of nearly ten years of litigation, the plaintiffs’ legal team fought against a multi-billion-dollar global engineering firm and opposing counsel from some of the nation’s best law firms. In 2018, the legal team lead by Davis and Friedman won a landmark four-week Phase I trial to establish liability and general causation on behalf of the injured workers.

As a result of their dedication and expertise, the jury found the defendant’s misconduct responsible for 10 specific medical conditions present among the workers, including various cancers, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular illnesses. Thereafter, following a lengthy mediation, the legal team lead by Mr. Ringger and his former law firm continued the massive effort to establish specific causation for the individual workers. Mr. Ringger and his colleagues engaged in countless briefing and discovery disputes; took and defended hundreds of depositions (including over 200 within a two-and-half-month period during the peak of the COVID pandemic); worked closely with many of the nation’s top scientists, researchers, and physicians to further the science of coal ash exposure and its connection to the specific illnesses identified during the Phase I trial; engaged in mediation sessions and settlement negotiations over the course of many months; and met with and obtained settlement approval from hundreds of individual clients. The team also handled briefing and argument on multiple appeals, including two before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and one in the Tennessee Supreme Court. These multi-year efforts were successful in achieving a remarkable victory for these impacted workers, and Mr. Davis and Mr. Ringger were proud to be named as finalists for this prestigious award.

Davis, Johnston, & Ringger partner Billy Ringger was recently honored by the SASS-ARENA Foundation for Medical Research at its annual Gala earlier this month in New York City.  Billy spoke before a large crowd and proudly accepted the foundation’s “Business Leadership Award” for his efforts in formulating the scientific team whose precedent-setting collaboration established the causal link between coal ash exposure and a myriad of medical conditions present among the Kingston coal ash remediation workers. Davis, Johnston, & Ringger partners Gary Davis and Keith Johnston were also in attendance, as well as several members of the coal ash expert team, including Elizabeth Ward, PhD, Epidemiologist and Chair of the World Trade Center Science Advisory Committee; Joseph Graziano, PhD, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University; Norman Kleiman, PhD, Professor of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University; Francis Arena, MD, Clinical Professor at the NYU School of Medicine and Medical Director at NYU Langone Arena Oncology; Angela Hind, MD, Toxin and Health Expert from Asheville, North Carolina; and Fred Grello, MD, Medicolegal Consultant from Knoxville, Tennessee.  Billy’s parents, Bill and Sue Ringger, also travelled to NYC to enjoy the evening with their son.

Davis, Johnston, & Ringger partner Billy Ringger recently spoke at the 42nd annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC) in Eugene, Oregon. Billy led a panel presentation before a large group of attendees regarding the dangers of coal ash exposure and his successful efforts in litigating the worker injury cases arising from the TVA Kingston Coal Ash Spill –the largest industrial spill in United States history. Billy was joined by colleagues Norman Kleiman, PhD of Columbia University and Angela Hind, MD, Toxin and Health Expert from Asheville, North Carolina.