In a victory for 3M Co., a judge ruled today that 67,700 residents of Washington County will not be considered as a a single group in a lawsuit against the company for damages allegedly suffered because of chemicals detected in their water.

The ruling The ruling by Washington County District Judge Mary Hannon denied class certification for the residents - which will greatly help 3M as it defends one of the biggest environmental lawsuits in state history.

"3M is pleased. The entire ruling is a victory," said company spokesman Bill Nelson.

Six county residents brought the lawsuit, which has been joined by another 1,000 people, according to the plaintiffs' lawyers.

Hannon's ruling means anyone wishing to sue the company for similar damages will have to do so in a separate legal action.

The chemicals detected in trace amounts are PFCs, or perfluorochemicals, made by 3M for such products as Teflon and Scotchgard stain repellant. They were legally disposed of by 3M in landfills in Washington County. In 2004, the chemicals were discovered in drinking water in Lake Elmo and Oakdale.

The discovery of a related chemical in drinking water in communities including Cottage Grove and Woodbury was announced in January.

Mega-doses of PFCs have caused cancer and other problems in rats. But state officials said they pose no short-term health risk to humans because they are in such minute amounts in the drinking water.

PFCs in water are measured in parts per billion - the equivalent of one second in 32 years. It is calculated that a Woodbury resident would have to drink 500,000 glasses of water a day to match the dose at which rats begin to show an effect. Longer-term studies of the effects of PFCs are under way.

The stakes in the case are potentially huge. If the case had gone to trial with the larger group certified as a class, no one could have predicted the amount of a potential settlement. But an Ohio case involving the same chemicals ended in 2005 with a settlement of $300 million.

In that case, the DuPont Company agreed to pay to remove chemicals from drinking water and monitor the health of water-drinking residents in the future. It did not pay for any alleged damages done to the water-drinkers.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs wouldn't comment Tuesday, but said in a written statement that their case would go forward without class certification.

But others suing 3M - or who may want to in the future - were disappointed.

"I think this is a setback," said Jon Archer, who noticed many neighborhood children with developmental disabilities when he lived in Oakdale.

He has blamed the water. "It shows you how big powerful attorneys manipulate the system," Archer said of today's ruling.

Mike Bradley, a Woodbury attorney with thyroid cancer, could have joined the lawsuit if the certification was allowed. Now, if he wants to sue 3M, he will have to take separate legal action.

"It's tremendously frustrating," said Bradley. "I am not sure what the judge was thinking. I am really concerned that corporate interests not be placed above families and children."

Specialty chemicals maker Cabot Corp. said Wednesday it agreed to settle the federal class action lawsuits pending against it that alleged it and other carbon black manufacturers violated antitrust laws in setting prices for carbon black sold in the United States.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Cabot said its share of the settlement cost is $10 million. Cabot also denied any wrongdoing of any kind, and said it "strongly believes that it has good defenses to these claims."

The company said it agreed to the settlement to avoid further expense, inconvenience, risk and the distraction of protracted litigation.

The settlement agreement is subject to court approval.

Boston-based Cabot said it will continue to defend the remaining antitrust lawsuits pending against it. There are suits pending in several state courts brought by purported classes of purchasers of carbon black, and a single federal case brought by a party that did not join the federal class action.

The high court certified a class covering about 72,000 former and current Wal-Mart workers. One legal expert said the decision "isn't good news for Wal-Mart".

"My speculation is that a jury is likely to find for the plaintiffs, given New Jersey juries and the pretty strong evidence put on elsewhere," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, faces more than 70 US wage-and-hour suits, including class actions by employees claiming the company failed to pay for all hours worked or didn't compensate them properly for overtime.

Since December 2005, juries in Pennsylvania and California have awarded Wal-Mart workers a total of $US251 million ($A303 million) in pay and damages over such claims.

"We're disappointed with the decision and we're studying the opinion," Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said.

Workers' lawyer Judy Spanier said her clients were "very pleased" with the decision. "It essentially adopts every argument we made," she said.

The ruling sends the case back to state court in New Brunswick for pretrial evidence-gathering.

The trial court first refused to grant class-action status, saying the case would be unmanageable. A mid-level appeals court upheld the decision. The Supreme Court found both lower courts were in error.

The workers claim Wal-Mart forced them to work through meal breaks, locked them in retail stores after they clocked out and coerced them into working off the clock.

The New Jersey action class will cover current and former hourly Wal-Mart staff employed from May 30, 1996, to the present.

A small record label has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and other digital music stores as well as the major record labels that carry its catalog of tracks. Dawg Music, which is run by bluegrass musician David Grisman and his partner Craig Miller, claims that entities carrying Grisman's musical tracks are knowingly selling his works with poor or nonexistent compensation without his consent. Represented by Strange and Carpenter from the Law Offices of Jeffry L. Graubart, the suit makes a two-part complaint implicating both labels and their online digital retail partners. The complaint states that Universal and Warner have neglected Daw Music's copyrights and royalties when signing deals with online stores -- including Apple's iTunes service.

The two large record companies agreed to online distribution of Grisman's library without first acquiring permission from Dawg Music, according to AppleInsider, and by doing so both labels made unauthorized hard copies of the music while also usurping control of royalties due for each album. That lack of communication resulted in "gross underpayments," claims Dawg Music, and online retail efforts such as the iTunes Store are guilty by association because they agreed to host and sell the unsanctioned tracks.

The suit claims that AOL Music Now, Buy.com, Apple's iTunes, MSN.com, Napster, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Wal-Mart.com, and Yahoo Music are guilty of trading songs without genuine consent because they send money to the intermediate labels but not the copyright holders.

Dawg Music also states that this evasion of copyrights has caused "irreparable injury" to the music label, and that the agreements will continue to damage the company as long as the present contracts for online music remain. All defendants named in the suit would be forced to pay Dawg Music for damages if the small label manages to prove its case in a central California court hearing.

Additionally, the court could order each defendant to pay $150,000 for each work whose copyright was violated if the case finds the labels and online music retailers guilty, adding up to millions of dollars in payments to Dawg Music.

Strange and Carpenter on behalf of Dawg Music will need to prove that none of the existing clauses in Dawg Music's contracts with Universal and Warner already cover the online distribution of their content if they are to win the case and recieve damages.