On April 28, 2026, a federal judge in the Northern District of Florida signed the final dismissal order for MDL 2885 — closing all 391,283 cases and officially ending the largest mass tort litigation in United States history. For veterans who filed claims in the 3M Combat Arms earplug lawsuit, this milestone is historic. But it does not mean the money has stopped moving. As of late August 2026, claimants have received over $3.03 billion in settlement proceeds, and hundreds of thousands of Deferred Payment Program claimants are waiting on their share of the next major $800 million distribution batch due on or before September 15, 2026.
The MDL Is Closed — Here Is What That Actually Means
MDL 2885, overseen by Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida, officially reached zero pending cases on April 28, 2026. The docket, which once held 391,283 individual lawsuits alleging that 3M’s Combat Arms Version 2 (CAEv2) dual-ended earplugs were defective and caused permanent hearing loss and tinnitus, is now administratively closed. This does not mean claimants lose their rights to settlement proceeds already allocated — it means no new federal civil claims can be filed, and the litigation phase is completely over.
The closure follows 3M’s landmark $6.01 billion settlement agreement reached in August 2023, structured as $5 billion in cash plus $1 billion in 3M stock, with payments staggered through 2029. The earplugs were standard military issue for U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2015, and plaintiffs alleged 3M knew of design defects that caused the plugs to loosen imperceptibly during use. Before settling, 3M lost 10 of 16 bellwether trials, with juries awarding nearly $300 million in initial verdicts for 13 of 19 individual veterans. The company spent more than $450 million defending the litigation before ultimately agreeing to resolve the claims. For context on how defective device injuries are valued in civil litigation, tools like a medical malpractice calculator illustrate the range of compensation frameworks used across product liability and device defect cases.
According to the U.S. Courts MDL statistics portal, multidistrict litigation of this scale is unprecedented in American legal history. The prior record holder was the opioid MDL, which topped out at roughly 3,000 cases — a fraction of what 3M faced.
Settlement Distribution Status as of August 2026
The numbers tell a story of progress and patience. As of August 2026, the settlement administrator BrownGreer has paid out $3,037,003,440 across all master settlement agreements — meaning approximately $2.97 billion of the $6.01 billion total remains to be distributed through 2029. The breakdown by program reveals where claimants stand today.
| Settlement Program | Claimants Paid | Claimants Unpaid | Amount Distributed | Status (August 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Payment Program (EPP) | 232,000+ | Minimal remaining | Majority of $3.04B total | Essentially complete |
| Deferred Payment Program (DPP) | Partial distributions | Hundreds of thousands | $224 million+ | 2026 primary distribution year |
| Extraordinary Injury Fund (EIF) — MSA I | Largely resolved | Minimal | Nearly $49 million | Largely resolved |
The next critical date for DPP claimants is September 15, 2026, when an additional $800 million distribution is scheduled to be paid out. As of late August 2026, over 232,000 Early Payment Program claimants had been fully paid, representing the most substantial completed phase of the settlement distribution. In November 2024, Judge Rodgers also approved a $540 million common-benefit fee fund — representing roughly 9% of the total settlement value — to compensate the attorneys whose coordinated work across thousands of cases drove the litigation to resolution.
Victoria Chambers is a mass tort and class action research analyst with extensive knowledge of multi-district litigation (MDL), defective product cases, dangerous drug lawsuits, and toxic exposure claims across the United States. Victoria is not an attorney and the information provided is for educational purposes only.