The drinking water at Camp Lejeune was found to be contaminated from the 1950s through the 80s, and the CDC found more than a million people may have been exposed. The Camp Lejeune Justice Act allowed those sickened to sue the federal government for damages, and more than 400,000 have filed complaints.
Eric Flynn is a partner with the Bell Legal Group, which is handling hundreds of the toxic water cases, and he said more than 2,500 lawsuits have been filed, and 411,000 claims remain pending with the Department of the Navy.
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Right now, the attorney said 25 specific cases have been selected for “bellwether” trials -- the first track of trials that will go to court – and they are connected to specific illnesses. Flynn said, “The five diseases in track one are Parkinson's, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Those diseases were selected for a number of reasons. One, they do represent a fairly large number of claimants in the global population, and when I mean global, I mean the 411,000 population.”
He said the cases were chosen with the input of both sides, and any awards made to victims in the first trials will set a sort of baseline to determine future settlement amounts.
For example, Flynn said, “The blood cancers could be used to kind of inform potential settlements for aplastic anemia or myelodysplastic syndrome or other types of blood diseases, and maybe potentially soft tissue cancers. The organ cancers could be used to extrapolate values for things like maybe prostate cancer, stomach cancer, cervical cancer, other types of organ-based cancers. Parkinson's could be used as a way to extrapolate for other neurological diseases like ALS and similar types of diseases that work on the nervous system.”
The reason that’s important, Flynn said, is because there’s very little precedent set for a legal action of this nature.
“There's not a lot of litigation on Parkinson's. Not a lot of litigation on bladder cancer or kidney cancer,” he said, “There is some litigation on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma because of the Roundup cases -- the Round Up weed killer cases. But more broadly, stomach cancer, all these other types of diseases that may be caused by the water at Camp Lejeune, there's just not a lot of litigation on them because they don't come up very often in the context of toxic exposure. It's pretty unusual to have over 30 years of just absolute chemical contamination that just went unchecked for a very long period of time in a very large area, with a lot of people involved, right? And so, a lot of the unknown in the case is really just, ‘What are these cases worth?’”
Many of the plaintiffs have expressed frustration about the slow pace of the litigation, with only a few settlements reached and those first bellwether trials not expected to begin until early next year.
Flynn said all parties involved are anxious for things to gain greater momentum, and he understands that is especially true for the victims – and why that’s the case. He said, “It's one thing for me as a lawyer to sit here and talk to you about procedural pacing. It's another thing for a person who has lived with this, lives with these diseases that are horrible, and they may be dying, or they had a loved one that died while waiting for justice. So, I want to be very clear that nobody feels the urgency of this case more than the victims.”
In fact, District Judge James Dever, who presided over the first hearing in the suit filed by the Marines and their families who were harmed by the toxic water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune said if each case went to trial independently, it would take the four U.S. District Court of Eastern North Carolina judges 1,900 years to get through — around the same time span of the Roman Empire.
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Still, Flynn said that in any legal case, and especially one as complex as this, there are procedures that can’t be avoided. “There is a process to litigation,” he said. “It's not unusual to have disputes over science and experts and evidence and what comes in and what doesn't and who says what and who doesn't, and what parts of reports are valid and what parts are reports are not. That's very common. I think what is unusual is the scale of the case. Folks are wrestling with very complex things. But I do understand very, very deeply that it's not fast enough for people who are really sick and who are dying.”
Congresswoman Deborah Ross introduced a bill in early summer that would make adjustments to the Camp Lejeune Justice Act – the original legislation that paved the way for people sickened by the toxic water aboard the base to sue for damages.
The Ensuring Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Act would make technical corrections to the initial legislation, including allowing the cases to be heard in any North or South Carolina federal court and not just the Eastern District of North Carolina.
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Flynn said, “If you think about the other civil cases that these judges have, and you think about the criminal cases that these judges have, which are constitutionally entitled to expediency, then it starts to eat away at the amount of time on an available calendar that the court can expand on trials.”
The proposal, which is expected to be taken up in both chambers of the U.S. Congress soon, also clarifies that the victims have a right to trial by jury. He said, “These are folks that fought for the American way of life, right? When you talk to them and you ask why they joined the Marine Corps, they did it out of a sense of patriotic duty to protect American values. And one of the most fundamental American values is a right to a jury trial. And I think this is just exactly what they're entitled to. A jury trial in America is a fundamental right, so much so that it's included in the 7th Amendment.”
That legislation, which Flynn hopes will be signed into law soon, also caps lawyers’ fees at 20 percent of the judgement for settlements and 25 percent for cases to go to trial.
Background:
In 1982, Camp Lejeune’s water supplies were formally tested and found to be contaminated, but the worst of Camp Lejeune’s drinking water wells remained open until 1985. Camp Lejeune residents were first notified about water contamination in June 1984 via a base newsletter, which downplayed the extent of exposure. More specific notifications about contaminated wells being shut down followed later in 1984 and 1985, but many people didn't learn the full truth until news reports in the late 1990s. The U.S. Marine Corps officially began notifying past residents in 1999 as part of a federal health study.
The contaminants at Camp Lejeune came from leaking underground storage tanks, waste disposal sites, industrial area spills and an off-base dry-cleaning firm – and testing found that three of the base’s eight water treatment facilities contained contaminants – including those that supplied water to barracks and family housing at several locations.
A study published in Environmental Health in 2014 reported samples taken at Camp Lejeune between 1980-1985 primarily contained tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene and their breakdown products, trans-1,2-dichloroethyline and vinyl chloride. Benzene was also found in the water but at officially safe concentrations.
According to the CDC, studies in animals have shown that long-term exposure to tetrachloroethylene can cause cancers of the liver, kidney, and blood systems, and changes in brain chemistry.
More than one million people may have been exposed at the base near Jacksonville.
Enacted 40 years after the government testing showed drinking water contamination aboard the base, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022 allows people who lived, worked, or were exposed to the toxic water for at least 30 days between 1953 and 1987 to sue the U.S. government for harm caused by that exposure.
Part of the Honoring Our PACT Act, the law removed previous barriers to lawsuits and established a lower standard of proof, requiring plaintiffs to show the contaminated water was at least "as likely as not" the cause of their illness.
Victims had two years from the date President Joe Biden signed the act to sue the federal government for compensation for illnesses caused by the water contamination – a window that closed last fall.
Currently, there are more than 400,000 pending claims with the Department of the Navy, but despite that overwhelming number, not a single case has gone to trial and there have been just a few settlements.
