Ohio Class Action Lawsuits: Active Cases, Claims, and Deadlines

Ohio class action lawsuits currently touch hundreds of thousands of residents through settlements and pending cases involving opioids, the East Palestine train derailment, PFAS “forever chemicals,” hospital data breaches, and the FirstEnergy bribery scandal. If you live in Ohio and fall within the group a lawsuit describes, you are almost always included automatically. Whether you get money, keep your right to sue on your own, or get nothing usually comes down to whether you respond to a notice on time.

The Major Ohio Class Actions Right Now

Several large cases are either paying out, still accepting claims, or working through the courts. Any of them may involve you if you lived in the right place at the right time or used the right product or service.

The East Palestine Train Derailment Settlement

After the February 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern derailment and the “vent and burn” of five railcars carrying hazardous chemicals, a federal class action in the Northern District of Ohio produced a $600 million settlement approved on September 27, 2024. The class includes roughly 55,000 people who lived, worked, owned property, or ran a business within 20 miles of the derailment site between February 3, 2023, and April 26, 2024.¹ Norfolk Southern denied wrongdoing.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the settlement, and all appeals were resolved on March 2, 2026. Personal injury payments went out by the end of March 2026. Direct payment claims are expected by June 2026, and business loss claims are anticipated later in the year.² Some class members have questioned whether people who develop health issues after filing can still seek more.¹

Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice and EPA reached a settlement with Norfolk Southern valued at over $310 million for cleanup, a 20-year community health monitoring program, water monitoring, and a $15 million Clean Water Act penalty.³

Opioid Settlements and OneOhio

The Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland is the home of MDL 2804, the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, the largest opioid case in U.S. history. Judge Dan Aaron Polster has presided since 2017, and the docket has grown past 5,100 entries. Final judgments and abatement plans on public nuisance claims against pharmacy defendants CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens were entered in 2022.⁴

Individual Ohio residents generally do not file claims out of these settlements. Instead, money flows through the OneOhio Memorandum of Understanding, signed in March 2020: 55 percent to the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, 30 percent to local governments, and 15 percent to the state for prevention, treatment, and recovery.⁵⁶ As of April 2025 the Foundation had received about $236 million from national settlements and bankruptcies involving Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Mallinckrodt, Allergan/Teva, and Endo, and its 2024 grant cycle awarded $45.4 million to 245 projects statewide. The Ohio Attorney General’s office reached a separate settlement with Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen valued at more than $808 million, paid over 18 years.⁷

PFAS Contamination

Ohio was the first state to sue DuPont over PFOA released from its Washington Works facility in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Then-Attorney General Mike DeWine filed the case in 2018, and it settled for $65 million in 2023. In April 2026 Governor DeWine announced the money would fund drinking water projects in six Ohio River counties: Belmont, Gallia, Lawrence, Meigs, Morgan, and Washington.⁸

On a broader front, 3M reached a $10.3 billion settlement in June 2023 to address PFAS water contamination, primarily benefiting municipalities and water utilities for filtration and treatment. Ohioans who developed serious illnesses linked to PFAS exposure may have separate personal claims. Those personal injury cases have been centralized in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina.² Conditions the file links to PFAS exposure include kidney disease, testicular cancer, liver cancer, thyroid cancer, and ulcerative colitis.

Healthcare Data Breaches

Two large data-breach class actions are working through Ohio courts.

A class action filed around December 2023 targets Perry Johnson & Associates, a medical transcription vendor, and Salem Community Hospital. A breach at PJ&A between March and May 2023 potentially exposed the personal and health information of nearly nine million people, including names, birth dates, addresses, medical record numbers, and admission diagnoses. Plaintiffs allege the defendants waited six months to notify affected individuals.⁹

On May 20, 2025, a ransomware group called Interlock attacked Kettering Health in the Dayton area, exfiltrating over 941 gigabytes of data covering more than 730,000 patient files. The system’s electronic health records were down for nearly two weeks, with full operations resuming June 10, 2025.¹⁰ By March 2026, 44 individual suits had been consolidated under a single master complaint before Judge Angelina Jackson in Montgomery County. Plaintiffs allege negligence, gross negligence, emotional distress, and breach of contract; 37 complaints cite delayed treatment and eight allege outright denial of care during the outage.¹¹

FirstEnergy Securities Fraud

Investors sued FirstEnergy Corporation in the Southern District of Ohio, alleging executives concealed roughly $60 million in bribes tied to House Bill 6, a law that gave the company about $2 billion in subsidies and revenue protections. When the scheme became public in July 2020 alongside criminal charges against then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, FirstEnergy stock dropped nearly 35 percent, wiping out over $7.68 billion in market value; later disclosures triggered roughly $2.4 billion more in losses.¹²

The district court certified a class of investors, but in August 2025 the Sixth Circuit vacated that certification and sent the case back for further proceedings.¹² Investors who held FirstEnergy stock during the class period should watch for new notices as the case moves forward.

How to Tell If You’re in a Class and Claim a Payout

In most class actions you are already a member of the class if you fall within the description in the complaint. No sign-up is needed at the start. When a case settles, you should receive a notice by mail or email explaining how to file a claim, usually by completing a form online or on paper before a deadline.¹³ Filing a claim costs nothing. Attorneys’ fees come out of the total settlement and have to be approved by the court.

If you think you may be covered but never got a notice, check the settlement administrator’s website for the specific case, or use the Ohio Attorney General’s search tool for active consumer lawsuits at lawsuitsearch.ohioattorneygeneral.gov.¹⁴

How to Opt Out, and When It’s Worth It

If you want to keep your right to sue the defendant on your own, you have to opt out. That usually means mailing a written request to the settlement administrator by a stated deadline. Opting out makes you ineligible for the class payout, and you take on the cost and effort of individual litigation.¹³ The trade-off matters most for people whose harm is well above average and whose individual case is likely worth more than a class share.

Watch for Fake Class Action Notices

Scammers send fake class action notices to harvest personal information. Before responding to any notice, confirm the lawsuit through the Ohio Attorney General’s searchable lawsuit database or a reputable news source. Suspected scam notices can be reported to the Federal Trade Commission and the Ohio Attorney General’s office, which also runs a free dispute resolution process for consumer complaints.¹³¹⁴

Deadlines for Bringing a Class Claim in Ohio

Every claim in a class action is subject to a statute of limitations. Miss the deadline and the court dismisses the case regardless of merit. The common Ohio windows are:

Personal injury and product liability: two years from the date of injury under Ohio Revised Code Section 2305.10. Product liability claims also carry a 10-year statute of repose from first delivery to a consumer.¹⁵
Fraud: four years.¹⁶
Written contract: six years.¹⁷
Oral contract: four years.¹⁷
Wrongful death: one year.¹⁶

For toxic exposure claims, including PFAS, asbestos, and certain drugs, Ohio uses a discovery rule that starts the clock when a medical authority informs the plaintiff of the injury, or when the plaintiff reasonably should have known.¹⁵ The clock can also be tolled if the plaintiff is a minor, is legally incapacitated, or the defendant cannot be located.¹⁶

How Ohio Courts Decide Whether a Case Becomes a Class Action

Ohio courts follow Rule 23 of the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure. To be certified as a class action, a case must clear four thresholds: the class has to be large enough that individual suits would be impractical (numerosity); the claims must share common legal or factual questions; the named plaintiff’s claims must be typical of the group; and the representatives must be able to fairly and adequately protect everyone’s interests.¹⁸ For most damages cases, the plaintiff also has to show that common questions predominate over individual ones and that a class action is a superior way to resolve the dispute.¹⁹

In Stammco, L.L.C. v. United Telephone Co. of Ohio, 2013-Ohio-3019, the Ohio Supreme Court held 5-2 that trial judges must run a “rigorous analysis” of these requirements and may probe the merits to the extent needed to decide the Rule 23 questions. The Court denied certification because individual questions about which customers had authorized third-party phone charges overwhelmed the common issues.²⁰¹⁹ That standard gives defendants a real tool to defeat certification.

A newer decision matters even more for people watching a pending case. In Voss v. Quicken Loans, 2026-Ohio-531, the Ohio Supreme Court in February 2026 upheld, 6-1, a legislative amendment that retroactively barred class actions for certain 2020 mortgage-release violations under Ohio Revised Code Section 5301.36. The majority reasoned that the law was “remedial” because the individual right to a $250 penalty remained; only the class procedure was cut off. Because no class damages had been awarded before the amendment took effect, the Court said no existing right was impaired, and it ordered the class decertified.²¹²² Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger dissented in part, saying the ban was inconsistent with Civil Rule 23 and an unconstitutional legislative intrusion on court procedure. The practical effect: the Ohio General Assembly can, in some situations, cut off a class action while the case is still pending, so long as no class damages have been awarded.

1
Ideastream Public Media. Concerns Linger Over East Palestine Train Derailment Settlement
2
East Palestine Train Settlement. East Palestine Train Derailment Settlement
3
U.S. Department of Justice. United States Reaches Over $310 Million Settlement With Norfolk Southern
4
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio. MDL 2804 – National Prescription Opiate Litigation
5
OneOhio Recovery Foundation. Settlement
6
National Academy for State Health Policy. State Opioid Settlement Spending Decisions – Ohio
7
Ohio Attorney General. Easing the Opioid Addiction Crisis
8
Ohio Governor’s Office. Governor DeWine, Ohio EPA Announce $65 Million DuPont Settlement Distribution
9
Healthcare Dive. Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Perry Johnson & Associates, Salem Community Hospital
10
American Bar Association. Data Breach Kettering Health Stolen Patient Records
11
Your Legal Help. 44 Lawsuits Now Filed Against Kettering Health Over 2025 Cyberattack
12
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In re FirstEnergy Corporation Securities Litigation
13
Ohio Legal Help. Class Action Lawsuits
14
Ohio Attorney General. Consumer Protection
15
Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Section 2305.10 – Bodily Injury or Injury to Personal Property
16
FindLaw. Ohio Civil Statute of Limitations Laws
17
Cleveland Law Library. Statutes of Limitations
18
Dro Dermiller Law. How Are Class Action Lawsuits Certified in Ohio
19
Reminger Co. Class Certification Criteria Under Ohio Civ. R. 23
20
Supreme Court of Ohio. Stammco v. United Telephone Co. of Ohio, 2013-Ohio-3019
21
Court News Ohio. Voss v. Quicken Loans, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-531
22
Supreme Court of Ohio. Voss v. Quicken Loans, 2026-Ohio-531