Seventy-two years after service members were first exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune, and three years after the passage of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, litigation over the resulting health impacts remains ongoing, with a new motion filed this week in an attempt to speed things up.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit connected to years of contaminated drinking water aboard Camp Lejeune, represented by the Plaintiffs' Leadership Group, have urged the court to move forward with trials, citing the urgent need for justice as claimants age and some die before their cases are resolved.
“Seventy-two years after the first service members began to be exposed to Camp Lejeune’s toxic water, three years after the enactment of the CLJA, and after two years of intense litigation and discovery, it is time to give America’s poisoned Marines their day in Court.” – Plaintiff’s Leadership Group, in a motion filed on November 12 ,2025Plaintiff’s Leadership Group
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The motion states that the government has filed more than 30 Daubert motions—challenges to the admissibility of expert testimony—in an attempt to exclude every expert witness and dismiss all Track 1 bellwether cases. These motions are long and complex, with the defendant's Phase II/III briefs alone totaling 690 pages and more than 233,000 words -- longer than Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
The PLG argues that these motions are redundant and meritless, especially in a bench trial setting where judges, unlike juries, are capable of discerning admissible evidence from inadmissible material. The plaintiffs contend that the government’s efforts are unnecessarily delaying justice for those affected.
The PLG’s motion asks the court to provisionally admit, or reserve decision on, expert testimony for the Track I bellwether cases. They suggest that this approach would allow trials to begin before every pending motion is resolved, redirecting resources away from repetitive legal briefs and toward substantive trials that could lead to a global resolution of claims.
The motion emphasizes that prioritizing trials within the next six months, even for a subset of bellwether cases, would accelerate the resolution process. The PLG notes that nearly all necessary evidence has already been collected and that further delays serve only to harm claimants.
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The PLG specifically requests that the initial trials focus on kidney cancer cases. According to Navy data, more than 23,000 CLJA claimants have been affected by kidney cancer—a disease with four distinct stages that could provide valuable insights and precedents for resolving claims involving other stage-based diseases.
Ultimately, the motion urges the court to order both parties to be ready to present evidence on the merits and to set a Track 1 bellwether trial date in early 2026. The PLG maintains that this approach would speed the path to justice for Camp Lejeune’s "poisoned Marines" and potentially facilitate a global settlement for all affected claimants.
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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.
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.
