Marinette PFAS Water Contamination: Tyco’s $10M Wisconsin Settlement and Your Individual Rights
You just heard the news. The State of Wisconsin settled with Tyco Fire Products for $10 million over decades of PFAS contamination in your water. The governor called it historic. The attorney general called it accountability. And a former mayor of your town called it “underwhelming” — a drop in the bucket.
If you live in Marinette, or Peshtigo, or anywhere along the groundwater plume spreading from the Fire Technology Center, you are reading that headline with a specific question running through your mind: Does this settlement cover me? Did I just lose my right to file a claim? Is it too late?
The answer is the most important thing you will read today, and it is this: No. The $10 million settles the State of Wisconsin’s environmental claims. It does not compensate you for what was done to your body, your property, or your family. Your individual legal rights are separate, intact, and fully yours to exercise — but the evidence that proves your exposure is on a clock, and some of it is already disappearing.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle toxic tort cases, environmental contamination cases, and the kind of mass-exposure litigation where a corporation put chemicals into the water and decades later the community is still counting the cost. We are writing this page for one person: you, sitting at a kitchen table in Marinette County, wondering whether the check the state just collected was supposed to be your check. It was not. Here is what is actually yours, what the law says about it, and what to do before the proof of what happened to you is legally erased.
The State Settlement Resolves the Government’s Claims — Not Yours
What the $10 million actually covers
The settlement announced between the State of Wisconsin and Tyco Fire Products resolves the lawsuit the state’s attorney general filed in 2022. That lawsuit alleged that Tyco contaminated the area around its Fire Technology Center in Marinette with PFAS chemicals from firefighting foam since the 1960s, failed to notify regulators of the discharges as required by state law, and did not adequately investigate or remediate the contamination. The $10 million goes into a trust fund earmarked for PFAS cleanup. Tyco also agreed to continue providing replacement wells, conduct monitoring and reporting, and implement further remediation measures.
That is the government’s recovery — for environmental damage, for regulatory violations, for the cost of cleanup. It is not a fund for individuals who drank contaminated water. It is not compensation for a resident who developed kidney cancer after decades of PFAS exposure. It does not pay for the blood testing that detects how much of these forever chemicals have accumulated in your body. It does not reimburse you for the property value you lost when the contamination became public. It does not compensate a family who buried a parent whose cancer may trace back to water they trusted because it came from their own well.
The critical separation: environmental remediation vs. individual toxic tort
This is the distinction the news coverage did not make clear enough, and it is the one the company is counting on you to misunderstand. There are two completely different legal tracks running parallel in any major environmental contamination case:
The first track is regulatory and environmental — the government sues the polluter under state environmental statutes and federal cleanup law, seeks remediation funding, and negotiates settlements that fund cleanup infrastructure. That is the $10 million. It belongs to the State of Wisconsin, held in trust for environmental remediation.
The second track is individual toxic tort — you, the person who drank the water, sue the polluter for the harm done to your body and your property. This includes personal injury, medical monitoring, property damage, and wrongful death. This track is completely separate. The state’s settlement does not preclude it, does not fund it, and does not reduce what you may recover. Your claim is yours alone.
The former mayor of Marinette said the dollar amount disappointed him. He called $10 million a drop in the bucket relative to the decades-long exposure. He is right about the scale — but the bucket he is measuring is the government’s bucket. Your bucket is separate, and it is still empty. Filling it is a different legal action, brought by you, on your timeline, for your harms.
The Marinette Contamination Timeline: Sixty Years in the Water
How PFAS entered Marinette’s water supply
Marinette sits in Marinette County along the Menominee River, directly bordering Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Roughly 11,000 people live here. The geography that makes this town what it is — a river corridor with groundwater feeds into residential wells — is the same geography that made it acutely vulnerable when an industrial site upstream began discharging persistent chemicals into the soil.
Tyco Fire Products operated a Fire Technology Center in Marinette where firefighting foam was tested and trained with, outdoors, for decades. The foam is called AFFF — aqueous film-forming foam — and it was designed to suppress fuel fires. It works because it contains PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals that resist heat, water, and oil. That resistance is exactly why they are called “forever chemicals” — they do not break down. Not in the environment, and not in your body.
From the 1960s through 2017, outdoor training sessions dispersed AFFF foam containing PFAS onto the ground at the Fire Technology Center. The chemicals seeped into the soil, reached the groundwater, and migrated through the aquifer that feeds private wells throughout the Marinette and Peshtigo area. Because northeastern Wisconsin’s rural water infrastructure relies heavily on private wells rather than municipal treatment systems, the contamination persisted undetected for years — potentially decades — before testing revealed it.
The 2017 turning point and what Tyco says it has done
Tyco ended outdoor foam training sessions in 2017. That same year, the company began providing bottled water and water purification systems to affected residents. Tyco reports having spent more than $100 million addressing the contamination — on bottled water provision, in-home filtration systems, a groundwater pollution extraction system, and other remediation infrastructure.
The company released a statement calling the settlement a reflection of “the extensive work Tyco has undertaken” and saying it has been “part of the Marinette community for over 100 years and the spirit of doing what is best for our neighbors and the environment will continue to be our priority.”
“We’ve been part of the Marinette community for over 100 years and the spirit of doing what is best for our neighbors and the environment will continue to be our priority.”
— Tyco Fire Products, public statement on the $10 million settlement
Those words are the company’s own. They are also a company’s words from an entity that the State of Wisconsin alleged discharged PFAS into the environment for over fifty years without notifying regulators, as required by state law, and without adequately investigating or remediating the contamination. Both things can be true simultaneously: a company can spend $100 million on remediation after the fact and still bear legal responsibility for the decades of exposure that occurred before it acted. Voluntary remediation does not extinguish individual tort liability. Providing bottled water after decades of contamination is not the same as compensating a family for the cancer that developed during those decades.
The second lawsuit still active
What the settlement announcement also did not emphasize is that a second lawsuit filed by the State of Wisconsin against Tyco and more than a dozen other companies over PFAS contamination remains active. That second case suggests the state itself considers the first settlement insufficient to cover the full scope of the contamination — and it means additional defendants, including other AFFF manufacturers and distributors, may face claims that could eventually benefit affected residents through broader accountability.
For you, the individual resident, the second lawsuit is a signal: the legal landscape is still evolving, additional responsible parties may be identified, and the window for individual claims remains open while the broader litigation continues.
What PFAS Does to the Human Body
The science of “forever chemicals”
PFAS are called forever chemicals because they resist breaking down — whether in well water, in soil, or inside the human body. They were developed as coatings to protect consumer goods from stains, water, and corrosion. They appear in nonstick cookware, carpets, outdoor gear, food packaging, and — critically for Marinette — firefighting foam. But the same chemical stability that made them useful industrially is what makes them dangerous biologically. The human body cannot metabolize them. They accumulate.
When you drink water contaminated with PFAS, the chemicals enter your bloodstream and concentrate in your liver, your kidneys, and your blood serum. They bind to proteins. They persist. The half-lives of individual PFAS compounds in the human body are measured in years — some compounds have estimated half-lives of two to five years or more, meaning that half the amount in your body today will still be there years from now, and the other half will only slowly diminish. If you were drinking contaminated well water for ten, twenty, or thirty years before the contamination was discovered, your body has been accumulating these chemicals the entire time.
The diseases linked to PFAS exposure
The science connecting PFAS to human disease has been building for over a decade. The C8 Science Panel — a group of independent epidemiologists who studied the health effects of PFOA contamination in the Mid-Ohio Valley — found what they called “probable links” between PFOA exposure and six specific conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and ulcerative colitis. That research, completed in 2012, remains one of the most significant epidemiological investigations of PFAS health effects in humans.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer — the world’s leading cancer-science authority, part of the World Health Organization — classified PFOA as Group 1, carcinogenic to humans, based on sufficient animal evidence and strong mechanistic evidence, with limited human evidence for testicular and renal-cell cancer. PFOS was classified as Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic to humans. Research has also linked PFAS exposure to immune dysfunction, developmental delays in children, liver damage, and changes to hormone systems.
For someone in Marinette, what this means in plain language: if you have been drinking water from a well within the contamination plume for years, and you have been diagnosed with kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, or ulcerative colitis, the chemicals the company put in your water may be part of why you are sick. And even if you have no diagnosis yet, the accumulation in your body may pose a risk that warrants medical monitoring — periodic testing designed to catch PFAS-linked diseases at early, treatable stages.
The latency problem — and why it matters for your legal rights
PFAS-linked diseases, like many environmentally caused cancers, have long latency periods. The disease may not manifest for years or even decades after the exposure begins. A resident who drank contaminated well water from the 1980s through the 2010s may only receive a cancer diagnosis in 2025 or later. This latency is not just a medical reality — it is central to your legal rights, because it affects when the clock to file a lawsuit begins running. We address that in the next section.
Wisconsin Law and Your Filing Deadline
The three-year statute of limitations and the discovery rule
Wisconsin applies a three-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. In most ordinary injury cases — a car crash, a fall — that clock starts running on the date of the injury. But toxic exposure cases are not ordinary. The disease caused by contaminated water may not appear for decades after the exposure. If the clock started on the day you drank the water, your right to sue would expire before you even knew you were sick.
Wisconsin law addresses this through the discovery rule. Under this doctrine, the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the injured party knew, or by reasonable diligence should have known, both that they had an injury and that the injury was caused by the defendant’s conduct. For a Marinette resident who developed kidney cancer in 2024 and only learned in 2025 that their well water had been contaminated with PFAS from Tyco’s training facility for decades, the clock may have only recently begun to run.
This is the single most important legal doctrine for anyone in the Marinette exposure zone. It means that even if your exposure began in the 1980s or 1990s, you may not be out of time — because you may have only recently discovered, or should only recently have discovered, the connection between your health and the contamination. But the discovery rule is not unlimited. Some states impose an outer deadline — a statute of repose — that can cut off a claim even before discovery. You need a lawyer to check the specific deadline that applies to your situation, in your state, for your facts. Do not assume you have plenty of time, and do not assume you are too late.
Comparative negligence in Wisconsin
Wisconsin follows a modified comparative negligence system with a 51% bar. This means that if you are found to be partly at fault for your own harm, your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but if you are found to be 51% or more at fault, you cannot recover at all. In a PFAS contamination case, this rule has limited application to individual residents — you did not choose to drink contaminated water, and you had no way to know the water was contaminated until testing revealed it. The defense may try to argue that you should have tested your water earlier or that you continued drinking it after notifications were issued, but these arguments are generally weak against residents who relied on their wells in good faith for years before the contamination was disclosed.
Punitive damages under Wisconsin law
Wisconsin permits punitive damages when a defendant’s conduct demonstrates intentional disregard of the rights of the plaintiff. This is a higher standard than ordinary negligence — it requires showing that the defendant knew of the danger and consciously chose to ignore it. In the Marinette PFAS context, the state’s lawsuit alleged that Tyco failed to notify regulators of PFAS discharges as required by law and failed to investigate or remediate the contamination for decades. If discovery reveals that Tyco or its parent company knew about the health risks of PFAS in its foam and chose to continue outdoor training without notifying regulators or the community, that evidence could support a punitive damages theory.
Wisconsin does not impose a general cap on personal injury damages. (Medical malpractice claims carry specific statutory limitations, but those would not apply to environmental toxic tort actions.) This means that in a PFAS personal injury case, the full range of compensatory damages — economic and non-economic — is potentially recoverable without a statutory ceiling, subject to what the evidence supports and what a jury or settlement process produces.
Medical monitoring as a distinct damage category
One of the most important damage categories in PFAS litigation is medical monitoring — the cost of periodic blood testing, imaging, and clinical surveillance for exposed individuals, designed to detect PFAS-linked diseases at early, treatable stages. This is distinct from personal injury damages for a manifested disease. A resident with elevated PFAS blood serum levels but no current cancer diagnosis may still have a valuable claim for the cost of lifelong medical surveillance. Medical monitoring is increasingly recognized in toxic tort litigation, and it represents a way for exposed residents to recover even if they have not yet developed a diagnosable disease. Whether Wisconsin recognizes medical monitoring as a standalone cause of action or as an element of damages is a question that requires current legal research — but the underlying need is real, and the cost of lifelong surveillance is quantifiable.
Who Is Responsible: The Corporate Structure Behind the Contamination
Tyco Fire Products and Johnson Controls
The defendant in the state’s lawsuit and in any individual action is Tyco Fire Products LP, the manufacturer and operator of the firefighting foam training center in Marinette. But Tyco does not stand alone. It is a subsidiary of Johnson Controls International plc, a multinational corporation with the financial depth that a decades-long contamination case demands. The corporate relationship between Tyco and Johnson Controls matters because it determines where the money is — and in toxic tort cases, finding the financially capable defendant is half the battle.
The corporate-structure question is this: does Johnson Controls exercise enough operational control over Tyco’s activities to support direct liability, or does the parent company’s insulation from day-to-day operations create a veil that shields it from claims? The answer depends on the degree of control — who made decisions about the training center’s operations, who knew about the PFAS contamination and when, who decided whether to notify regulators, and who authorized the continued use of PFAS-containing foam for outdoor training. These are questions that discovery answers, and they are questions we pursue aggressively because the entity with the deepest pockets is often one corporate layer above the entity on the permit.
The broader AFFF defendant universe
Tyco is not the only company that may face claims from Marinette-area residents. The AFFF firefighting foam used at the training center was manufactured, formulated, and supplied by a chain of companies — and each one may bear responsibility under different legal theories. The manufacturers of PFAS-containing firefighting foam may face strict liability and failure-to-warn claims for designing and distributing a product with foreseeable health risks without adequate warnings to end-users and downstream communities.
The second active Wisconsin lawsuit names more than a dozen other companies alongside Tyco, and nationally, the AFFF litigation has been consolidated in a federal multidistrict litigation in the District of South Carolina. That MDL includes both public water provider claims and individual personal injury claims. The personal injury claims are separate from the public water settlements that 3M and DuPont/Chemours/Corteva reached with municipal water systems — those settlements, totaling in the billions, compensate water utilities for remediation costs, not individuals for personal injuries.
What this means for you: the defendant map in a Marinette PFAS case may be wider than just Tyco. Identifying every company that manufactured, supplied, or distributed the foam used at the Fire Technology Center is part of building a complete case — and it is work that requires the kind of corporate-structure analysis and discovery resources that a firm experienced in mass tort litigation brings.
The Evidence That Proves Your Exposure — and How Fast It Disappears
What records exist and who holds them
Every PFAS case is built from a web of records that link the chemicals in the water to the chemicals in your body to the disease in your medical chart. These records exist — but they are held by different entities, on different retention schedules, and some of them are already on legal expiration clocks.
Historical AFFF foam procurement, formulation, and usage records at the Fire Technology Center — these establish the volume, type, and duration of PFAS discharges. They are the foundation for exposure modeling and strict liability. They are held by Tyco and Johnson Controls, and corporate document retention policies may destroy records on standard schedules. A litigation hold letter must issue immediately to freeze them.
Groundwater monitoring, soil sampling, and plume-mapping data from Tyco and the Wisconsin DNR — these demonstrate the geographic extent and temporal duration of contamination, which is critical for proving that your specific well was within the exposure pathway. Ongoing remediation may alter site conditions, and baseline data must be preserved and independently verified. These records are held by Tyco, the DNR, and potentially environmental contractors.
Blood serum PFAS testing results for exposed residents — this is the biomarker evidence that bridges environmental exposure and individual causation. If you have had your blood tested for PFAS, those results show the internal dose — the actual amount of forever chemicals accumulated in your body. PFAS half-lives are measured in years but vary by compound, so testing should occur promptly to capture peak accumulation levels. If you have not been tested, this is one of the first things to discuss with both a doctor and a lawyer, because the test results are evidence.
Internal Tyco and Johnson Controls communications regarding PFAS knowledge, risk assessments, and regulatory notification decisions — these are the documents that support punitive damages by showing what company leaders knew about PFAS toxicity and when they knew it relative to their failure to notify regulators or the community. Email retention policies, employee turnover, and corporate restructuring risk the loss of institutional knowledge. These are discoverable but fragile.
Residential well water testing results and property records for affected Marinette-area homes — these establish individual exposure dose and property damage for nuisance, trespass, and diminished-value claims. Well conditions and property transactions may disperse or destroy evidence of historical contamination levels.
Wisconsin DNR inspection reports, violation notices, and correspondence with Tyco — these are public records that may establish notice, prior warnings, and regulatory violations that can serve as negligence-per-se predicates in individual civil actions. They are generally retained as public records but should be obtained and organized promptly.
The destruction clock
Here is what the company is counting on you not knowing: the records that prove your case are on timers. Corporate documents get purged on retention schedules. Employee emails get deleted when people leave. Groundwater conditions change as remediation alters the site. And your own blood serum levels, while they persist for years, are not permanent — they decline over time once exposure stops, which means the longer you wait to test, the lower your numbers may be, and the harder it becomes to prove the full extent of your historical accumulation.
This is why the first action in any PFAS case is a preservation demand — a letter that orders the company and its parent to freeze every relevant document, email, monitoring report, and internal communication before routine retention policies legally erase them. That letter goes out the day you call a lawyer. Not the month. Not the season. The day.
If the company lets required evidence die after receiving a preservation notice, the law has an answer for that. Courts can impose an adverse-inference instruction — telling the jury they may assume the lost records were as damaging as the plaintiff says. Sanctions are available. In some jurisdictions, spoliation of evidence is itself a separate claim. The leverage begins the moment the letter is on file.
What Your Individual Case Is Worth
The damage categories in a PFAS toxic tort claim
A complete individual toxic tort claim from the Marinette exposure zone may include several categories of damages, each addressing a different dimension of the harm:
Economic damages include past and future medical expenses for PFAS-linked conditions — cancer treatment, thyroid medication, ongoing monitoring, surgical interventions, and the full cost of care for diseases that may not have manifested yet but are statistically foreseeable given your exposure and biomarker levels. They include lost wages and diminished earning capacity if illness or treatment has kept you from work. They include the cost of alternative water supplies and in-home filtration systems you have paid for or will need to pay for. And they include property damage — the diminished real estate value of a home whose well water is contaminated with forever chemicals, a loss that is real and measurable through appraisal and market analysis.
Non-economic damages include pain and suffering — not as an abstraction, but as the specific, lived experience of knowing that your body has accumulated chemicals that may cause cancer, of living with that knowledge every day, of the anxiety that every routine blood test might bring bad news. They include loss of enjoyment of life — the activities, the peace of mind, the trust in your own home and water that was taken from you. They include the psychological toll of knowing that the water you gave your children, your spouse, your parents was contaminated for years before anyone told you.
Punitive damages are available under Wisconsin law if the defendant’s conduct demonstrates intentional disregard of the rights of the plaintiff. The state’s allegations — that Tyco failed to notify regulators of PFAS discharges for decades and failed to investigate or remediate — provide the framework for this theory. If internal documents show that the company knew about the risks and chose silence, that is the kind of conduct punitive damages exist to punish.
Medical monitoring damages are the cost of periodic blood testing, imaging, and clinical surveillance for exposed individuals. Even without a current disease diagnosis, residents with confirmed elevated PFAS serum levels and prolonged exposure may recover the cost of future medical surveillance designed to detect PFAS-linked diseases at early, treatable stages.
Survival and wrongful death claims apply to any Marinette-area residents whose PFAS-linked cancers proved fatal. The survival estate recovers the damages the deceased person would have recovered between injury and death — their pain, their medical costs, their lost earnings. The wrongful death beneficiaries — typically spouse, children, and in some cases parents — recover their own losses: the financial support the deceased would have provided, the companionship, the guidance, the relationship that was taken.
Case value ranges — honestly framed
Individual toxic tort claimants in the Marinette exposure zone may see widely varying case values depending on exposure duration, biomarker evidence, disease manifestation, and the strength of the causation proof.
For residents with documented exposure and elevated PFAS blood levels but no manifested disease — primarily medical monitoring and property damage claims — the range may fall between approximately $50,000 and $200,000 per individual plaintiff. These cases rest on the cost of lifelong surveillance and the diminished property value, not on a cancer diagnosis.
For residents with confirmed PFAS-linked cancers — kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid cancer — or pediatric developmental injuries with strong exposure-duration and biomarker evidence, the range may reach between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000 per individual plaintiff. These cases carry the full weight of medical expenses, lost earnings, pain and suffering, and potentially punitive damages.
An aggregate mass tort portfolio across multiple Marinette-area plaintiffs could reach $10 million to $50 million or more, depending on plaintiff count, injury severity, and whether causation expert testimony survives the challenges the defense will mount under Wisconsin’s Daubert standard for expert admissibility.
These ranges are estimates based on case-type analysis, not guarantees. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is different, and the specific value of yours depends on factors that only a full case evaluation can assess — your exposure history, your blood serum levels, your medical records, your property records, and the evidence that discovery produces from the company’s own files.
The Defense Playbook and How We Counter It
Play 1: “Everyone has PFAS in their blood”
The defense will argue that PFAS are ubiquitous — they are in nonstick cookware, food packaging, stain-resistant carpets, and the blood of nearly every American. How can you prove that the PFAS in your body came from Tyco’s foam and not from a frying pan?
The counter is source attribution through dose and proximity. If your well is within the documented contamination plume, if your blood serum levels are dramatically elevated above background population levels, and if the specific PFAS compounds in your blood match the compounds used in the AFFF foam at the Fire Technology Center, the exposure pathway is traceable. Government estimates suggest that up to half of all U.S. households have some level of PFAS in their water — but a resident whose private well sits within a mapped plume from a known discharge site has a dramatically different exposure profile than the general population. The science of PFAS source attribution is advancing, and elevated serum levels in plume-proximity residents are not explainable by background consumer-product exposure alone.
Play 2: “You cannot prove PFAS caused your specific disease”
The defense will argue that general causation — does PFAS cause kidney cancer? — is not the same as specific causation — did PFAS cause YOUR kidney cancer? They will point to other risk factors: smoking, diet, genetics, occupational exposure from other sources. They will argue that your cancer was idiopathic, meaning it arose from unknown causes, and that you cannot pin it on their foam.
The counter is a differential diagnosis performed by a qualified toxicologist and treating physician. Specific causation in toxic tort cases is proven through a methodology that rules in the known cause (PFAS exposure at elevated dose and duration) and rules out alternative explanations to the extent the evidence allows. The IARC Group 1 classification of PFOA, the C8 Science Panel’s probable-link findings, and the dose-response literature provide the scientific foundation. Your elevated blood serum levels provide the biomarker evidence. Your residence within the contamination plume provides the exposure pathway. Together, these elements build a specific-causation case that survives the defense’s idiopathic-disease argument — though the defense will fight this battle hard, and Wisconsin courts applying the Daubert standard will rigorously test the epidemiological linkage.
Play 3: “We already settled — and we provided bottled water”
The company will point to the $10 million state settlement and to the more than $100 million it says it has spent on bottled water, filtration systems, and remediation. The implication: we have done enough. We have taken responsibility. What more do you want?
The counter is the distinction between environmental remediation and individual compensation, which we addressed at the top of this page. The state settlement funds cleanup. The bottled water and filtration systems mitigate ongoing exposure. Neither compensates you for the disease you developed, the years of accumulation before the contamination was disclosed, the property value you lost, or the lifetime of medical surveillance you now need. Voluntary remediation is not a release from individual tort liability. Providing clean water after decades of contamination is not the same as paying for the harm those decades caused.
Play 4: The signed-release trap
This is the one that can silently kill your case. If Tyco or its representatives have asked you to sign any agreement — a bottled water delivery agreement, a filtration system installation contract, a property access authorization, or any document related to the provision of alternative water — read it carefully before signing anything else. Some of these documents may contain waiver or release language that purports to bar future claims. A document that looks like a simple receipt for a water purification system may, in its fine print, contain a release of all claims against the company.
The counter is simple: do not sign anything from Tyco, Johnson Controls, or their representatives without having a lawyer review it first. If you have already signed something, bring it to a toxic tort attorney immediately. Releases obtained from unrepresented individuals, particularly in contexts where the signer did not understand the legal significance of the document, may be challengeable — but it is far easier to avoid signing a bad release than to undo one after the fact.
How a PFAS Case Is Actually Built
Week one to resolution: the proof story
Here is how an individual PFAS toxic tort case is actually constructed, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table:
Week one — the preservation demand goes out. The first document we send is a litigation-hold letter to Tyco and Johnson Controls ordering them to freeze every relevant record: AFFF procurement and usage logs from the Fire Technology Center going back to the 1960s, internal communications about PFAS toxicity and regulatory notification decisions, groundwater monitoring data, soil sampling results, and every document reflecting what the company knew about the health risks of its foam and when it knew it. This letter also goes to any third-party contractors who performed environmental testing, well installation, or remediation work. The letter is the first thing that stops the clock on evidence destruction.
Weeks two through four — exposure documentation. We document your water source history: where you have lived, how long, what water you drank (private well, municipal, bottled), and when you first learned of the contamination. We obtain your well water testing results from the DNR, from Tyco’s testing program, or from independent testing. We order your blood serum PFAS test if you have not had one, or we obtain the results if you have. We pull your complete medical history, focusing on any diagnosis within the PFAS-linked disease spectrum: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, developmental delays in children.
Months one through three — expert retention and case theory development. We retain the experts your case requires: a toxicologist to establish general causation (PFAS causes this disease) and specific causation (PFAS at this dose caused YOUR disease); a hydrogeologist to map the contamination plume and establish that your well was within the exposure pathway; an environmental medicine specialist to interpret your blood serum results and design a medical monitoring protocol; a life-care planner to project the lifetime cost of your care; and a forensic economist to reduce future losses to present value.
Months three through twelve — discovery and depositions. The company produces documents. We read them. We identify the internal communications that show what Tyco knew and when — the memos, the emails, the risk assessments, the decisions to continue outdoor training, the decisions about whether to notify regulators. We depose the people who made those decisions, under oath, with the documents in front of them. This is where the punitive damages narrative is built — not from our arguments, but from the company’s own words.
Year one and beyond — resolution. Some cases settle during discovery, once the company sees the strength of the evidence. Others proceed to mediation, where a neutral facilitator helps both sides reach a number. Some go to trial, where a jury of your neighbors — in Marinette County or wherever the case is filed — hears the full story and decides what a life contaminated by forever chemicals is worth.
The causation battlefield
The single hardest fight in any PFAS personal injury case is causation. The defense will retain its own experts who will challenge the epidemiological evidence, argue that your disease has other causes, and question whether the specific PFAS compounds in your blood can be attributed to the Fire Technology Center rather than to consumer products or background environmental exposure. Wisconsin courts apply the Daubert standard for expert admissibility, which means your experts must demonstrate that their methods are reliable, their reasoning is sound, and their opinions are grounded in accepted science. This is not a fight for a generalist. It requires a trial team with experience in toxic tort litigation, access to the right scientific experts, and the resources to mount a causation case that survives the defense’s challenges.
This is where the mass tort portfolio approach matters. Individual plaintiff cases arising from the Marinette PFAS contamination should be coordinated rather than filed as isolated single-plaintiff actions — not because your case is not individual, but because the expert witness costs, the discovery costs, and the causation-proof costs are shared across multiple plaintiffs. One toxicologist’s general-causation testimony serves every plaintiff in the portfolio. One hydrogeologist’s plume map serves every plaintiff whose well is within it. The economies of scale make it possible to build a case that a single plaintiff could not afford to build alone.
What to Do Right Now: Your First Steps
If you live in the Marinette or Peshtigo exposure zone
Get your blood tested for PFAS. If you have not had a blood serum PFAS test, talk to your doctor about ordering one. The test measures the concentration of specific PFAS compounds in your blood. Elevated levels above background population norms are evidence of exposure — and the sooner you test, the more accurately the results reflect your peak accumulation, because levels begin to decline once exposure stops. Bring any test results you already have to your first conversation with a lawyer.
Document your water source history. Write down every address you have lived at in the Marinette area, the years you lived there, and the source of your drinking water (private well, municipal supply, purchased bottled water). Note when you first became aware that your water might be contaminated. Note when you were notified by Tyco, the DNR, or anyone else about the contamination. This timeline is foundational to your case.
Preserve your medical records. Gather records of any diagnosis within the PFAS-linked disease spectrum: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and developmental delays in children. If you have ongoing treatment, keep records current. If a family member who lived in the exposure zone has passed away from a PFAS-linked cancer, obtain their medical records and death certificate.
Do not sign anything from Tyco or its representatives without legal review. This includes bottled water agreements, filtration system installation contracts, property access authorizations, and any document that mentions claims, releases, waivers, or settlements. If you have already signed something, bring it to a toxic tort attorney immediately.
Talk to a lawyer before the evidence disappears. The records that prove your case — the company’s AFFF usage logs, the internal communications about what they knew, the groundwater monitoring data that maps the plume to your well — are on corporate retention schedules that can legally destroy them. The preservation letter that freezes those records goes out the day you call. Every day you wait is a day the company’s document retention policy is running.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the $10 million state settlement compensate me for my PFAS exposure?
No. The $10 million settles the State of Wisconsin’s environmental claims against Tyco Fire Products. It funds a trust for PFAS cleanup and requires continued monitoring and remediation. It does not compensate individual residents for personal injuries, medical monitoring, property damage, or wrongful death. Your individual legal rights are separate from the state’s settlement and remain fully intact.
Can I still file a lawsuit after the state settled with Tyco?
Yes. The state’s settlement does not preclude individual personal injury, medical monitoring, or wrongful death claims against Tyco, Johnson Controls, or other potentially responsible parties. The settlement resolves only the government’s environmental and regulatory claims. Your right to seek compensation for harms done to you is a separate legal action that you bring on your own behalf.
How long do I have to file a PFAS personal injury claim in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin applies a three-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. However, the discovery rule may toll — pause — the clock until you knew or should have known that you were injured and that your injury was caused by the defendant’s conduct. Because PFAS-linked diseases can take years or decades to manifest after exposure, the clock in your case may have only recently begun to run. You should consult with a toxic tort attorney to determine the specific deadline that applies to your facts, because statutes of limitations are strict and missing the deadline ends the case regardless of its strength.
What if I have elevated PFAS blood levels but no cancer diagnosis?
You may still have a valuable claim. Medical monitoring — the cost of periodic blood testing, imaging, and clinical surveillance designed to detect PFAS-linked diseases at early, treatable stages — is a recognized damage category in toxic tort litigation. Residents with documented elevated PFAS serum levels and prolonged exposure may recover the cost of lifelong medical surveillance even without a current disease diagnosis. You may also have a property damage claim for diminished real estate value related to the contamination.
What if a family member died from a PFAS-linked cancer?
If a family member who lived in the Marinette exposure zone died from a cancer that may be linked to PFAS exposure — particularly kidney cancer, testicular cancer, or thyroid cancer — you may have a wrongful death claim. Wisconsin law provides for both a survival action (recovering the damages the deceased would have recovered between injury and death, including their pain and suffering and medical costs) and a wrongful death claim (compensating the surviving beneficiaries for their own losses, including lost financial support and lost companionship). The specific beneficiaries who may bring a wrongful death claim and the damages available are governed by Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute, which an attorney can review with you.
Is it too late if my exposure started decades ago?
Not necessarily. The discovery rule in Wisconsin means the statute of limitations may not begin running until you discovered, or should have discovered, the connection between your health and the PFAS contamination. For many Marinette residents, that discovery may have come only when testing revealed the contamination or when the state’s lawsuit became public. However, some states impose outer deadlines — statutes of repose — that can bar claims after a certain period regardless of discovery. You need an attorney to check the specific deadline applicable to your situation.
What is PFAS and why is it called a “forever chemical”?
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a class of thousands of synthetic chemicals developed for their resistance to heat, water, and oil. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down — not in the environment and not in the human body. PFAS accumulate in the liver, kidneys, and blood serum, with half-lives measured in years. They were used in firefighting foam (AFFF), nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpets, food packaging, and many other consumer and industrial products. In Marinette, the primary exposure pathway was AFFF foam used in outdoor training at Tyco’s Fire Technology Center, which seeped into groundwater and migrated to private wells.
What diseases are linked to PFAS exposure?
The C8 Science Panel found probable links between PFOA exposure and six conditions: kidney cancer, testicular cancer, high cholesterol, thyroid disease, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and ulcerative colitis. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA as Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans) and PFOS as Group 2B (possibly carcinogenic). Research has also linked PFAS exposure to immune dysfunction, developmental delays in children, and liver damage. If you have been diagnosed with any of these conditions and lived in the Marinette exposure zone, your diagnosis may be connected to your water.
Do I need a lawyer, or can I handle this myself?
PFAS toxic tort cases are among the most complex personal injury claims in the legal system. They require expert witnesses in toxicology, epidemiology, hydrogeology, and environmental medicine. They require corporate discovery against multinational defendants with armies of lawyers. They require causation proof that survives rigorous Daubert challenges. They require life-care planning and forensic economics. A person without legal training and without the resources to retain these experts cannot effectively build or prosecute a PFAS personal injury claim. This is not a case type where self-representation is viable.
How much does it cost to hire Attorney911 for a PFAS case?
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% of the recovery before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. Your first consultation is free. We advance the costs of building the case — expert witness fees, filing fees, discovery costs — and those costs are recovered from the settlement or verdict. You do not write us a check to get started. You do not pay hourly. You pay nothing unless we recover money for you.
The Firm Behind This Page
Ralph Manginello — Managing Partner
Ralph P. Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, as a trial attorney. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, and he takes cases in Wisconsin working with local counsel where required. He is the managing partner of The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, operating as Attorney911, based in Houston with offices in Austin and Beaumont and a track record of recovering millions for injured clients. He does not promise outcomes. He promises preparation, and he delivers it by building cases the way a journalist builds a story — document by document, source by source, until the truth is undeniable.
Lupe Peña — Associate Attorney
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the residents of Marinette. He knows how the other side prices a claim, how it selects IME doctors, how it uses surveillance and social media, and how it engineers recorded statements to be quoted against you. Now he sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family communicates more comfortably in Spanish, Lupe speaks your language — not through a translator, but directly.
What the first call feels like
The first call to Attorney911 is free, confidential, and costs you nothing — not in money, and not in obligation. You will speak with a live person, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not an answering service. A person who can begin evaluating your situation immediately. Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña handle toxic tort cases because the fight — against a corporation that put chemicals in your water and a legal system that can feel designed to protect the corporation rather than you — is the kind of fight that requires both a trial lawyer’s instinct and an insider’s knowledge of how the defense operates.
We handle environmental contamination and toxic exposure cases, including PFAS and firefighting foam toxic tort claims. If your family has lost someone to a PFAS-linked cancer, we also handle wrongful death claims. The call is free. The consultation is free. The fee is contingency — we do not get paid unless we win your case.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. The specific deadlines, damages, and legal theories that apply to your situation depend on your individual facts and the current state of Wisconsin law. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.
Hablamos Español.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). Free consultation. No fee unless we win.
The water in Marinette was contaminated for decades. The company that contaminated it has settled with the state. Your rights — for your health, your property, your family — are still yours. The question is whether you exercise them before the evidence that proves them disappears.