Only About a Third of Canoga Park Homeowners Filed, So the Northrop Grumman Estimate Jumped: $56,736.60 a Home in Sub-Area A, Up From $21,110 — 1,151 Claims, 7 Opt-Outs, No Objections, Final Hearing November 12, 2026

The Northrop Grumman soil contamination settlement for Canoga Park and Winnetka has a new set of numbers, and they are much larger than the ones homeowners saw in August. In the motion for final approval filed on October 13, 2026, class counsel told Judge Hernán D. Vera that the notice program resulted “in 1,151 submitted claims, only seven (7) exclusion requests, and no objections as of October 13, 2026.” Of those claims, 1,092 came from current owners — “approximately 33% of the 3,294 current property owner addresses on the Class List” — and 22 from former owners, out of 169 former-owner addresses. The remaining 37 are still being audited.

That matters because of how the $75,000,000 fund is split. Each sub-area’s share is divided only among the homes in it whose owners “submit valid and timely claims.” The notice estimates assumed every home would claim. Roughly two of every three did not, so each filing home’s share is now much bigger. Class counsel’s new estimates, verbatim from the motion: Sub-Area A, “(298 claims filed): $56,736.60 per eligible home”; Sub-Area B, “(256 claims filed): $46,231.47”; Sub-Area C, “(538 claims filed): $25,141.28”; former owners, “(22 claims filed): $4,545.45 per eligible home.”

Nobody has been paid. These are estimates in a court filing, not an order, and the filing itself says “These figures are approximate.” Nothing is final until Judge Vera rules after the hearing on November 12, 2026, and the money does not move until the Effective Date, after any appeals. We first covered the settlement terms on September 3.

By our arithmetic that is about 2.7 times the notice figure in Sub-Area A, 2.9 times in B, 3.4 times in C and about 10 times for former owners. The new figures also use a smaller cost number: the motion assumes the court approves “an attorneys’ fee award of 40% of the settlement fund” ($30,000,000), costs of $2,371,230.09 (the notice had allowed up to $3,000,000), service awards of $30,000 each for Jed and Alisa Behar and $200,000 for administration. We checked the math: $75,000,000 minus those amounts leaves $42,368,769.91; minus the $100,000 former-owner pool, $42,268,769.91. Forty percent of that divided by 298 homes is $56,736.60, and the same steps give $46,231.47 and $25,141.28 to the cent. The former-owner figure is simply $100,000 divided by 22.

Three things can still move these numbers. First, the 37 claims under audit are “not included in this payment analysis,” and “additional timely-mailed claim forms may still be en route”; every added approved claim in a sub-area lowers that sub-area’s per-home amount. Plaintiffs say they “will submit a supplement to this motion with final claims data in advance of the Final Approval Hearing.” Second, the fee: the estimates assume every fee dollar requested is granted, so a lower award would raise them. Our illustration only, not a prediction: at a 25 percent fee ($18,750,000) with everything else unchanged and the October 13 claim counts, the estimates would be about $71,837 in A, $58,536 in B and $31,833 in C. Third, an appeal: the official FAQ says that if there is one, class counsel intends to ask for up to 45 percent ($33,750,000).

The rules for who is paid have not changed. There is “only one payment per single-family home or townhome in the Class Area, regardless of the number of owners” — co-owners get one check payable to all of them and divide it. A home sold after July 1, 2024 can produce two payments: the seller from the former-owner pool and the buyer from the sub-area pool. The administrator will issue IRS tax forms to people who receive payments.

• Claim deadline: October 10, 2026 — passed. The official site states: “The deadline to file a claim has passed.” If you did not file, the FAQ is blunt: “If you do nothing, you will receive no payment from this Settlement,” and you are still bound by the release.
• Opt-out and objection deadline: September 25, 2026 — passed. Seven exclusion requests came in, from the owners of four properties; nobody objected to the settlement or to the fee request.
• Final approval hearing: November 12, 2026, 10:00 a.m. Pacific, Courtroom 5B, 5th Floor, 350 W. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. The court decides the fee award at the same hearing. You do not have to attend. The FAQ warns the hearing “may be continued or adjourned without further notice,” so check the official site before going.
• Payment: Northrop Grumman must fund the settlement “within 30 days after the Effective Date,” and the administrator will make reasonable efforts to pay “within 45 days after the Effective Date.” The Effective Date comes after final approval and the end of any appeals, which the FAQ says can take “perhaps more than a year.”
• When the check comes: it is valid for 180 days from mailing. An uncashed check is reissued once with a 90-day expiration; money nobody can deliver is redistributed to class members who cashed, and after one redistribution the rest goes to a court-approved charity (cy pres).

If you filed, the useful thing to do now is to keep your mailing address current with the administrator, A.B. Data, at (833) 419-5050 or through the contact page of CanogaParkClassAction.com. If your claim is one of the 37 under audit — the motion says they are being checked “to confirm the claimants’ eligibility” — answer any request that comes from the administrator through the official site or phone number.

As of October 17, 2026, the court docket also shows a request to file a document under seal and a correction filed on October 14 and a declaration filed on October 16. We have not been able to read them; we will update this page when the final claims supplement or the court’s ruling is public.

Many homeowners got more than one reminder, and every one described in the motion came from the court-appointed administrator, A.B. Data: the notice package mailed August 11, 2026 to 3,463 addresses; an email on August 27 to 3,049 addresses (2,817 delivered); a reminder postcard on or about September 10 printed with each owner’s Unique ID and PIN; door hangers on 2,504 owner-occupied homes between September 22 and 24; and a reminder email on October 2. Targeted social-media and web ads ran from August 18 to September 17, and the call center logged 689 calls through October 13.

The motion reports that the administrator “did not detect attempts at fraudulent claims and did not have issues with claim aggregators.” The FAQ is clear that “No Claim Form submitted to a third party (e.g., a claims aggregator) will be valid.” Now that claims are closed, any message that offers to file for you, to “speed up” a Canoga Park payment, or that asks for a fee or your bank details is not from the settlement. The only official site is CanogaParkClassAction.com and the only phone number is (833) 419-5050; type them yourself rather than clicking a link. Payments go out by check after the Effective Date, not before the hearing.

Fees. Class counsel ask for 40 percent, $30,000,000, plus $2,371,230.09 in expenses. They point out that the Lanier Law Firm alone carried $2,720,692.41 in costs but left $478,274.69 of it out of the request. No class member objected, but the motion notes that “Defendants purportedly reserved their right to object to Class Counsel’s request for attorney’s fees.” The judge is not bound by the request; whatever is not awarded stays in the fund for homeowners, because nothing reverts to Northrop Grumman.

How big is $75 million? Plaintiffs’ experts put property-value damages for the class at $342,140,079 and mitigation costs at $241,334,660. Against the combined figure of about $583 million, the motion says the settlement is “at least 12.8% of the potential recovery” — and argues that is fair given the trial risks, including a statute-of-limitations fight over each class member’s claim. The case settled nearly two weeks into trial; Northrop Grumman denies the allegations, and nothing has been decided against it.

A separate state-court suit. The motion discloses Shakelian, et al. v. Northrop Grumman Corp., et al., No. 26STCV22881 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, filed July 21, 2026 by 227 named plaintiffs over the same contamination, adding medical-monitoring and personal-injury claims. Class counsel say most of them are renters, minors or people outside the class area; only 34 appear to be class members, owning 27 homes, and none opted out or objected. That is consistent with the release: this settlement covers property damage and mitigation only and “does not release any claims Settlement Class Members may have for personal injury, wrongful death or medical monitoring.”

What is the Northrop Grumman controversy? Searches for this settlement also turn up Bethpage, Long Island, a different contamination case. There, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation oversees a groundwater plume of chlorinated solvents, including TCE, and 1,4-dioxane from the former Northrop Grumman Bethpage Facility and a Navy plant that “now extends nearly four miles” (State Superfund sites 130003A and 130003B). The Canoga Park settlement does not cover Bethpage residents; questions about that cleanup go to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.