Northrop Grumman Settled in the Middle of Trial for $75 Million. The Notice Tells 3,294 Canoga Park and Winnetka Homeowners to Expect $7,494 to $21,110 a House — Estimates That Already Assume the Lawyers Get the Full $30 Million. One Check per Home, About $444 for People Who Already Sold, and Claims Close October 10.

The facts in this section come from Judge Vera’s class-certification order of July 1, 2024 (Dkt. 175), which drew them from both sides’ filings. In 1967, Litton Industries and Litton Systems bought the industrial property at 8020 Deering Avenue in Canoga Park. From 1968 to 1970, Litton “manufactured printed circuit boards, and conducted related operations such as copper plating, silk screening, photo printing, and chemical stripping at the Site,” using “certain toxic chlorinated solvents including trichloroethene (‘TCE’) and tetrachloroethene (‘PCE’).” Contamination at the site was discovered in the late 1990s. Northrop Grumman acquired Litton in 2001 and, since 2003, has been investigating and remediating the groundwater under the supervision of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board; it began looking beyond the fence line in 2007 and found a TCE groundwater plume and a soil-vapor plume leaving the site.

The order’s two sentences that define this case: the plume is “approximately 2.4 miles long and 1.8 miles wide,” and it “lies directly beneath 3,294 homes and exceeds California’s Environmental Screening Level for TCE.” The borders of the plume are the borders of the class. Jed and Alisa Behar, the named plaintiffs, live in a house directly above it; their theory is that solvent vapor can migrate up through soil into foundations and crawlspaces, and that homes over the plume are worth less because of it. They sued for negligence, trespass and nuisance in May 2021.

Northrop Grumman’s position, as recorded in the settlement agreement itself, is the opposite on every point: the company contends “that they are not responsible for any alleged contamination, that there is no evidence of any loss of property value in the Class Area, that there is no evidence of the presence of contamination from its alleged predecessors’ operations in any homes,” that the plume “has been reduced and will continue to be reduced,” and that the plaintiffs “filed this Action too late.” Nothing in the settlement decides who is right. A full-day mediation before Hon. Suzanne Segal on January 28, 2022 failed; a second, in person before Antonio Piazza on October 1, 2025, also failed. The agreement then says the parties “reached this agreement in the middle of trial.” Class counsel filed it on June 1, 2026 (Dkt. 408-1); Judge Vera preliminarily approved it on July 28, 2026 (Dkt. 425).

The settlement class, verbatim from the agreement and the notice: “All persons who own a single-family home or townhome within the Class Area as of the date of notice of the settlement, as well as all persons who owned a single-family home or townhome within the Class Area as of July 1, 2024, but who have since sold their single-family homes or townhomes as of the date of notice of the settlement, excluding employees of Defendants.” The date of notice is August 11, 2026. Condominiums, apartments and commercial parcels are not in the definition; the official site has a class-area map and a searchable address list organized by sub-area, and the notice says to check there rather than assume.

The classes certified in 2024 were two — a Mitigation Class and a Property Damage Class — and, according to the Lanier Law Firm’s announcement at the time, both excluded anyone who bought a home after being told in writing about the contamination. The settlement class as written excludes only Northrop Grumman’s employees; if you bought with a disclosure and are unsure where you stand, that is a question for the administrator, not for us.

What you give up is narrow and worth quoting. The release covers “any and all claims, known or unknown, for property damage or Mitigation Measures that arise out of or relate to the facts alleged in the Second Amended Complaint.” The official FAQ then says, in bold: the settlement “does not release, and you will not be giving up, any claims based on alleged personal injury, wrongful death, or claims for medical monitoring.” This is a property settlement. A health claim, if anyone has one, is untouched by it.

The money is not split evenly across the 3,294 homes. Section 4.4 of the agreement takes $100,000 off the top for former owners — people who owned as of July 1, 2024 and sold before August 11, 2026 — to be divided equally among those who file. Everything left is then divided by geography, and the geography comes from a Northrop Grumman consultant’s document: the “Revised Off-Property Vapor Intrusion Investigation Summary Report prepared by Geosyntec Consultants, dated July 16, 2020,” which was Trial Exhibit 396.

One inconsistency in the documents, flagged because it changes nobody’s check but might confuse anyone reading both: the settlement agreement counts Sub-Area B at 809 homes and Sub-Area C at 1,696; the long-form notice counts them at 727 and 1,778. Both versions total 3,294. The dollar estimates on the official site are computed on the notice’s counts.

The rule that matters most for families: “There will be only one payment per single-family home or townhome in the Class Area, regardless of the number of owners.” The notice’s own example is a Sub-Area A house owned by three people: a single $21,110 check is issued, payable to all co-owners, and the three “are responsible for dividing” it. A house that changed hands after July 1, 2024 is the one exception — the seller claims from the $100,000 pool, the buyer from the sub-area pool. The former-owner estimate of $444 implies class counsel expect roughly 225 such sales; if fewer file, each gets more.

Class counsel “intends to apply to the Court for an award of attorneys’ fees of up to forty percent (40%) of the Settlement Fund ($30,000,000.00),” plus costs “estimated not to exceed $3,000,000.00,” administration “estimated not to exceed $200,000.00,” and service awards of up to $30,000 each for Jed and Alisa Behar. If the case is appealed, the request rises to 45 percent, $33,750,000. The fee petition was due September 4, per the official FAQ; objections to it, and to the settlement, are due September 25.

Here is why that matters to the per-home numbers. Take the full request out of $75,000,000 — $30,000,000 in fees, $3,000,000 in costs, $200,000 in administration, $60,000 in service awards — and $41,740,000 remains. Subtract the $100,000 former-owner pool: $41,640,000. Forty percent of that, divided by 789 homes, is $21,110 — the notice’s Sub-Area A figure to the dollar. The same arithmetic reproduces $16,037 and $7,494. In other words, the published estimates are not a midpoint; they are what results if the court grants every dollar requested.

The Ninth Circuit’s customary benchmark for a percentage fee is 25 percent, and courts depart from it in either direction. Our arithmetic only, not a prediction: at a 25 percent award ($18,750,000) with the same costs, the net becomes $52,990,000, and the per-home estimates become about $26,800 in Sub-Area A, $20,400 in B and $9,500 in C. Because the settlement is “non-reversionary” — “No portion of the Settlement Fund will revert to Defendants” — every dollar the court trims from fees goes to homeowners, and every home that fails to file raises the share of the homes that do, since each pool is divided among those “who submit valid and timely claims.”

• Claim deadline: October 10, 2026 — postmarked or received. File online at CanogaParkClassAction.com or mail the form to the Behar v. Northrop Grumman Class Administrator, c/o A.B. Data, Ltd. The official site lists the phone as 833-419-5050; ClaimDepot gives the mailing address as P.O. Box 173072, Milwaukee, WI 53217.
• Proof of ownership is required. The FAQ says a claim must be submitted “together with proof of ownership.” The agreement’s claim-form specification calls for the property address, a mailing address, and verification that you owned the home as of July 1, 2024 or the date of notice; ClaimDepot’s summary lists deeds, tax records or other official documents, plus a Social Security or tax ID number — which fits the agreement’s promise that the administrator “will issue the necessary IRS tax forms.” The settlement offers no advice on taxes and says so.
• Opt out or object: September 25, 2026, postmarked. Opting out keeps your right to sue for property damage and forfeits the payment.
• Final approval hearing: November 12, 2026, 10:00 a.m. Pacific, Judge Hernán D. Vera, Courtroom 5B, U.S. Courthouse, 350 W. 1st Street, Los Angeles.
• Payment: within 45 days after the Effective Date, by certified mail to the address on file — so after any appeal is resolved, not after the hearing.
• No fee to file. Anyone charging to “process” a Canoga Park claim is not the administrator.