Burlington County homeowners who suffered multimillion-dollar flood damage in 2004 have reached a settlement with a key defendant in their class-action suit against owners of a series of breached dams.

The $425,000 settlement is with the Girl Scouts of Camden County, which owns the two upstream dams on the south branch of Rancocas Creek in Tabernacle. The 300 families in the suit have won $7.1 million so far.

"Everyone talks about the domino effect, how when the upper dams failed it knocked out the lower dams and so on.. . . So we were always focusing on the dams most upstream," plaintiff attorney Edward Petkevis said.

The settlement, reached Wednesday, is subject to approval at a fairness hearing before Burlington County Superior Court Judge Karen L. Suter. The Girl Scouts have not admitted liability in the matter.

The case originated with a storm that dropped 13 inches of rain in central Burlington County in July 2004. Sections of Medford, Southampton, Lumberton, and Medford Lakes had severe flooding after 21 dams were breached 30 others were damaged.

Lawsuits claiming owners of the dams had inadequately maintained them were consolidated into a class-action suit in 2005.

The agreement with the Girl Scouts organization, which owns the upper and lower dams at Camp Inawendiwin, is the 26th settlement in the case, Petkevis said. It is the fifth-largest in dollar value.

An attorney for the Girl Scouts did not return a message yesterday, but the group has previously argued that breaches of the organization's dams were not responsible for flooding downstream.

Attorneys for the said there was no evidence that they directly caused the downstream breaches, but experts hired for the case said the failures increased the flooding.

A trial was to begin in Superior Court next week on the liability of the Girl Scouts and YMCA Camp Ockanickon in Medford, the primary defendant and owner of the dams farthest up another creek branch.

That trial, now involving only the YMCA, has been postponed to November, when a jury will be charged with deciding whether the organization was negligent in maintaining the dams, whether it violated dam-safety rules, and whether its dam failures caused flooding downstream. Opening arguments are scheduled for Nov. 30.

If the YMCA is found at fault, a separate proceeding would determine the damage for which individual homeowners must be compensated.

Additional proceedings would address how the settlement money would be paid to families in the class-action suit. Legal fees also would be paid out of the amount.Petkevis said he expects those determinations to last between six and 12 months.