The latest mold lawsuit news centers on a cluster of 2025 and 2026 cases targeting college dormitories, privatized military housing, and large apartment complexes, with plaintiffs alleging that building owners knew about dangerous mold conditions for years and failed to act. Settlements and verdicts are climbing into the tens of millions, but plaintiffs still face a steep scientific burden to tie specific illnesses to mold exposure.
College Dormitory Cases Filed in 2025 and 2026
Four university mold suits are now active, and they share a pattern: students say ventilation and moisture problems persisted for months or years while schools downplayed complaints.
University of the South (Sewanee)
Seven students sued the University of the South on September 23, 2025, in state circuit court in Winchester, Tennessee, seeking more than $35 million over mold in Johnson Hall, a female freshman dormitory. Four more plaintiffs joined within weeks, bringing the total to eleven.
The 67-page complaint alleges that mold problems date to at least January 2024 and that independent testing in some rooms measured mold levels 2,200 times higher than outdoor air. Students reported a cluster of symptoms they called the “Johnson Cough,” including asthma, nosebleeds, fatigue, headaches, anxiety, and respiratory distress. The university did not conduct an official mold inspection until October 2024, according to the suit, when family pressure forced the issue.
The claims include negligence, gross negligence, willful and wanton conduct, negligent infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, and violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act. Johnson Hall was evacuated in October 2024, cleaned, partially renovated, and reopened in spring 2025. The university has declined to comment on pending litigation.
Lipscomb University
Eleven current and former students filed a 123-page complaint against Lipscomb University on January 7, 2026, in Davidson County Circuit Court in Nashville, seeking $14.5 million over mold in three women’s dormitories: Elam Hall, Fanning Hall, and Johnson Hall.
The suit describes persistent condensation, damp air, and musty odors severe enough to warp belongings and keep wall decorations from sticking. Plaintiffs say they developed chronic fatigue, headaches, respiratory symptoms, and cognitive impairment that interfered with class, study, and sleep. The complaint alleges that Lipscomb officials minimized complaints, blamed student behavior, and did not adopt campus-wide mold prevention and remediation protocols until November 5, 2025.
Lipscomb called the lawsuit “egregiously overstated” while stating it “takes these allegations seriously” and is “deeply committed to the well-being of our students.” The university said it follows protocols consistent with EPA guidance and industry standards and pledged to “vigorously defend against these claims.” The students are represented by GriffithLaw Injury Lawyers in Nashville, which reported additional students contacting the firm after the filing.
Ohio State University
More than fifty students sued Ohio State on January 13, 2025, over mold in the Lawrence Tower dormitory that they say began in August 2024 and caused illness and academic disruption. The case, Barga v. The Ohio State University, brings claims of negligence, breach of the implied warranty of habitability, nuisance, fraud, and violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practice Act. The plaintiffs are represented by Just Well Law of Austin, Texas, working with Bressman Law of Dublin, Ohio.
Spring Hill College
Kacy Nalley, a 2023 nursing graduate and former soccer player at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, sued the school in Mobile County Circuit Court alleging that recurring mold in her dorm room from 2022 through her May 2023 graduation caused severe asthma and lasting respiratory problems. Nalley says she filed repeated work orders with photographs of black particles on walls and inside vents, suffered an asthma attack during a soccer match in October 2022, and still needs two inhalers.
Spring Hill denies that campus mold caused her health problems. A judge recently ordered the college to produce three mold-remediation contracts after it objected to a subpoena for outside contractor records. A jury trial is scheduled for November 2026.
Military Housing: Balfour Beatty and the Fallout from a 2021 Fraud Case
Civil mold claims against privatized military housing contractors have surged in the wake of a December 2021 criminal case in which Balfour Beatty Communities pleaded guilty to defrauding the U.S. military by falsifying housing repair records between 2013 and 2019 to collect performance bonuses. The company paid $65 million in fines and restitution and another $35 million to settle a False Claims Act suit.
On March 27, 2025, 192 current and former residents of Naval Air Station Key West, Florida, filed a 175-page complaint in Monroe County state court alleging mold, collapsing ceilings, water damage, insect infestations, lead paint, asbestos, and electrical problems in Balfour Beatty-managed housing. The plaintiff count had grown to 272 by September 2025. The case was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where an amended master complaint was filed on May 27, 2026 under the caption In Re: Key West NAS Litigation. Balfour Beatty denies the allegations and says it has implemented leadership and governance improvements since the fraud settlement.
A separate Texas case, Dudek v. Balfour Beatty Communities, was filed in August 2025 in the Western District of Texas over mold and habitability conditions at Fort Bliss. The district court terminated the case in April 2026, but notices of appeal were filed the following month and the matter is now at the appellate stage.
Sarah Kline of Armed Forces Housing Advocates told Military Times her organization has not been able to find a single privatized military housing community “that military families aren’t living in sub-par housing.”
Apartment and Residential Settlements
One of the largest recent residential resolutions involves Heather Hill Apartments, a 459-unit complex in Temple Hills, Maryland. The Maryland Attorney General sued the owners over black mold, rodent infestations, water damage, and broken appliances, and alleged the owners operated without a valid rental license for more than two years while filing over 240 failure-to-pay rent actions against tenants.
In September 2025, the Attorney General announced an $11.2 million settlement that included $8.8 million in canceled rent debt for the unlicensed period, at least $2.6 million in restitution and rent credits, and dismissal of more than 200 pending eviction actions. The company is also barred from reporting unpaid rent during the unlicensed period to credit agencies, and did not acknowledge wrongdoing. A separate tenant class action alleging a “systematic and pervasive failure to maintain habitable living conditions” is pending in federal court, with a motion for class certification before the court.
In Florida, a jury in 2021 awarded $48.2 million to a single plaintiff in Jividen v. MLCasa V, a habitability case involving roughly eighteen months of apartment mold exposure. The award included $35 million for pain and suffering and $10 million for future medical costs, though the defendants were not represented at trial.
Why Causation Is the Hardest Part of a Mold Case
Mold suits usually rest on the implied warranty of habitability, negligence, premises liability, breach of contract, and consumer protection claims, with intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress and punitive damages added where conduct is alleged to be egregious. The contested question in nearly every case is causation.
Plaintiffs have to prove both general causation (that mold exposure can cause the type of illness alleged) and specific causation (that it caused their particular injuries). Courts screen the expert testimony under the Daubert standard, and that screen is tight. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology notes that the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization have found insufficient evidence to support a causal link between inhaled mycotoxins and conditions commonly labeled “toxic mold syndrome” or “chronic inflammatory response syndrome.” Urine mycotoxin tests are not FDA-approved, lack standardization, and have no established thresholds for harmful levels. There is also no federal standard for safe indoor mold concentrations.
The science is stronger for a narrower set of injuries. Damp indoor environments are well connected to allergic rhinitis, sinusitis, and asthma exacerbation. Broader claims of cognitive impairment, organ damage, and systemic illness face stiffer scrutiny.
Defendants typically argue they were never notified, that the mold did not amount to a material habitability violation, that they acted promptly once informed, and in dorm cases that student behavior contributed to moisture buildup. Lipscomb’s public response, for example, emphasized expected thermostat settings, keeping vents unblocked, and bathroom cleaning. Under comparative fault rules in states like California and Tennessee, damages can be reduced by the percentage of fault assigned to the plaintiff.
What Is Changing in the Law
Maryland passed the Tenant Mold Protection Act in 2025, requiring landlords to perform mold assessments within 15 days of receiving written notice and complete remediation within 45 days. The law directs the Maryland Department of the Environment to adopt uniform standards for mold assessment and remediation by June 1, 2027. If finalized on schedule, Maryland would be one of the first states with legally enforceable benchmarks for indoor mold, a model other states and courts could cite. Neither the EPA nor any other federal agency has set enforceable indoor mold exposure limits, leaving juries to decide what counts as a reasonable living environment case by case.
Third-party litigation funding is making it financially possible for plaintiffs’ firms to carry long, complex cases that individual tenants or students could not pay for. Just Well Law, which represents plaintiffs in both the Sewanee and Ohio State cases, has secured a $3.8 million verdict in a Texas mold case and represents military families in contaminated-water litigation at Pearl Harbor.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers are also pushing beyond unit-level negligence into public nuisance and consumer protection fraud theories borrowed from opioid and environmental mass torts, and they are using institutional maintenance records to argue that defendants knew about problems long before acting. The Sewanee complaint alleges decades of institutional knowledge; the Lipscomb suit points to the November 2025 adoption date of campus-wide remediation protocols as evidence of delay.