From The Environmental Working
Group
August 17, 2005
Teflon Attorneys Win Trial Lawyer Award
Six West Viriginia and Ohio lawyers received the 2005 Trial Lawyer
of the Year Award from the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice Foundation
July 26 for their work on behalf of residents drinking Teflon-contaminated
water from DuPont's nearby Washington Works plant. DuPont was
sued for dumping the persistent Teflon chemical into community
water supplies, although the company has known of its toxicity
and potential to cause human health effects for decades.
The full release follows, and EWG's work on the Teflon chemical
is here.
http://www.tlpj.org/pr/tloy_2005_072605.htm
Trial Lawyers for Public Justice
West Virginia, Ohio Attorneys Win 2005
Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for Settlement Holding DuPont Accountable
for C8 Pollution
Three-Year Class Action Battle Will Result
in Answers on Health Effects of Contamination in Drinking Water
by DuPont Plant
Six West Virginia and Ohio lawyers received the 2005 Trial Lawyer
of the Year Award from The Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ)
Foundation on July 26, 2005, for achieving a groundbreaking settlement
in Leach v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, a class action
lawsuit in which corporate giant DuPont was sued for damages and
medical monitoring stemming from its leaking of perfluorooctanoic
acid or “C8” – a chemical used in producing
nonstick cookware – into the drinking water of Mid-Ohio
Valley residents living near DuPont’s Washington Works plant
in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
The nation’s single most prestigious honor for trial lawyers,
the award is bestowed annually upon the lawyers who made the greatest
contribution to the public interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting
case. The award was presented at The TLPJ Foundation’s Annual
Gala & Awards Dinner at The Carlu in Toronto to Charleston,
West Virginia attorneys Harry G. Deitzler, R. Edison Hill, and
James C. Peterson of Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitzler,
PLLC (Hill, Peterson), Larry A. Winter of Winter Johnson &
Hill PLLC, and Cincinnati attorneys Robert A. Bilott and Gerald
J. Rapien of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister LLP.
“These outstanding attorneys exemplify trial lawyers’
commitment to fighting injustice and protecting the health of
American families from corporate polluters,” said outgoing
Foundation President Jeffrey M. Goldberg of The Jeffrey M. Goldberg
Law Offices in Chicago. “Thanks to the skills and perseverance
of these stellar attorneys, we can now begin to discover the truth
about C8 and its potential health effects.”
In Leach, a three-and-a-half-year class action battle in West
Virginia’s Wood County Circuit Court, the attorneys uncovered
evidence revealing that DuPont was aware of C8's potential toxicity
as far back as 1961. Thanks to this “smoking gun”
evidence, the plaintiffs’ team achieved an unprecedented
$107.6 million settlement in February 2005. Not only does the
settlement require DuPont to pay to determine whether the C8 it
leaked into the public water supply will harm human health and
the environment, but the bulk of the settlement funds will go
toward creating the largest community health study ever, covering
some 80,000 people living along the Ohio River. If a health link
is established, DuPont must spend up to another $235 million to
monitor the health of residents exposed to C8. In addition, DuPont
will pay $10 million to install filters at six water treatment
plants in West Virginia and Ohio to reduce C8 in the water supply
immediately.
Because C8 has been linked to heart attacks, breast cancer and
testicular cancer in humans, and appears in animal species worldwide,
the case is sparking intense national and international regulatory
interest. The evidence uncovered by the plaintiffs’ team
has led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to initiate
a $300 million suit against DuPont for illegally withholding data
about the potential dangers of C8 exposure, and spurred the EPA
on June 27, 2005, to reclassify C8 from a “suggested”
to a “likely” human carcinogen.
The other finalists for the 2005 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award,
also honored at the gala, were:
• Chicago-based lawyers Michael I. Behn of Futterman Howard,
Steven A. Miller of Sachnoff & Weaver, Bruce C. Howard of
Robert D. Allison & Associates, Michael Jaskula of Soule,
Bradtke & Lambert, and Thomas Asch, then “of counsel”
to Sachnoff & Weaver, who in U.S. ex rel. Robinson v. Northrop
Grumman Corporation used the qui tam or “whistleblower”
provisions of the federal False Claims Act to achieve a $133 million
settlement and win justice after 16 years for two whistleblowers
who were fired and blackballed for exposing massive fraud against
the Pentagon in the mid-to-late 1980s at Northrop Grumman Corporation,
one of the nation’s largest defense contractors. “Smoking
gun” evidence uncovered by the plaintiffs’ legal team
showed that Northrop concealed major accounting irregularities
and misled Pentagon auditors.
• Russ M. Herman and Stephen J. Herman of Herman, Herman,
Katz & Cotlar, L.L.P., in New Orleans, Bruce C. Dean of Bruce
Dean, L.L.C. and Deborah M. Sulzer of Gauthier, Houghtaling, Williams,
and Sulzer, both in Metairie, Louisiana, Robert L. Redfearn of
New Orleans’ Simon, Peragine, Smith & Redfearn, Stephen
B. Murray, Sr., and Stephen B. Murray, Jr., of New Orleans’
Murray Law Firm, Walter J. Leger and Christine L. DeSue of New
Orleans’ Leger and Mestayer, Joseph M. Bruno and David S.
Scalia of New Orleans’ Bruno and Bruno, Kenneth M. Carter
of New Orleans’ Kenneth M. Carter, PLC, solo practitioner
W. James Singleton of Shreveport, Raul R. Bencomo of New Orleans’
Bencomo and Associates, Meyer H. Gertler and Louis L. Gertler
of New Orleans’ Gertler, Gertler, Vincent & Plotkin,
Daniel E. Becnel, Jr., of Law Offices of Daniel E. Becnel, Jr.
in Reserve, Louisiana, and Jack M. Bailey, Jr., of Shreveport’s
Law Offices of Jack M. Bailey, Jr., who won a landmark May 2004
jury verdict in Scott v. American Tobacco Company, a class action
suit against Big Tobacco. The Scott jury ordered the tobacco industry
to pay $590 million for a 10-year program of smoking cessation
strategies to help Louisiana smokers kick the habit – the
nation’s first tobacco industry-funded program of this kind.
The verdict covers hundreds of thousands of state residents who
took up smoking between 1954, when the tobacco industry began
its 50-year cover-up about nicotine addiction and smoking’s
connection to disease, and May 1996, when the suit was filed.
• Patrick J. McGroder of the Phoenix firm Gallagher &
Kennedy, P.A., and David L. Perry of Perry & Haas in Corpus
Christi, Texas, who have made the country’s most popular
police car – Ford’s Crown Victoria Police Interceptor
– safer for officers across the nation, achieving a confidential
settlement in Schechterle v. Ford Motor Company for a Phoenix
police officer severely burned in a post-collision fire caused
by the vehicle’s dangerous design. Through eight other Crown
Vic cases, and a far-reaching public education campaign, McGroder
and Perry have forced Ford to retrofit approximately 350,000 police
cruisers to correct the safety defect that has led to the burning
deaths of 18 officers.
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