Advocates are reacting after a federal court put intense pressure on both sides to settle the massive, long-running Camp Lejeune water contamination lawsuit. They’re pleased that lawyers have been given a firm deadline to make substantial progress. A four-judge panel gave the Department of Justice and the Plaintiffs' Leadership Group a hard deadline of October 30 to reach a global settlement for the victims of years-long drinking water contamination at Camp Lejeune.
From 1953 until 1987, the water supply was heavily contaminated with high levels of volatile organic compounds, including trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene, and vinyl chloride. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry determined that the contamination levels exceeded safety standards by several hundred times, leading to significantly increased rates of cancers, birth defects, and other severe chronic illnesses among those stationed at the base. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that as many as one million people may have been exposed.
Mike Partain was born at the base and exposed to that water in-utero, and was later diagnosed with breast cancer. He’s been fighting for justice for nearly two decades and is pleased with the decision of the judges. He said, “The court pretty much laid it down. They told both sides, quit messing around, get this done. You have until October 30th. If DoJ was acting in the best interest of the community and the government and doing their job, the court wouldn't have had to step in and say, you know, here's what you need to do. I mean, it's just that simple.”
The mandate was tied directly to the reappointments of the victims' leadership attorneys, whose previous terms expired on June 30. The federal judges attached strict conditions to these reappointments, making the October settlement deadline a requirement for the lawyers to keep their roles.
Mike and Jerry Ensminger say the ruling shines a light at the end of what has been a very long tunnel. Ensminger has also advocated for Camp Lejeune victims for three decades, after his daughter Janey, who was born on base, died of leukemia.
“It's given hope back to the community,” Mike said, “But in the end, if either side doesn't do what the court asks, well, the court pretty much said what's gonna happen. So, I hope they take it seriously. They being both Plaintiff's Leadership Group and the Department of Justice.” Jerry added, “Well, it looks like the court is really the only entity involved in this thing that is really looking out for the welfare of the victims. That's it in a nutshell. The other two sides are all worried about money.”
The court emphasized that a global deal is the absolute best way to resolve the litigation, noting it will significantly speed up payments to victims and stop the draining of public resources.
In the initial hearing in the Camp Lejeune Justice Act litigation several years ago, Eastern District of North Carolina Judge James Dever cautioned the lawyers from both sides not to let it drag out like the 9/11 Ground Zero claims. “He said, ‘Look, you can do it the easy way, or you can argue amongst yourselves and three years later, we'll be right back where we started, nowhere,’” Mike explained, “And guess what? We're about three and a half, almost four years out from that hearing, and not much has been accomplished in the ways of a global settlement or even getting a bellwether trial on the docket.”
To make sure talks do not stall, attorneys from both sides must now participate in mandatory weekly meetings with court-appointed settlement masters.
One of the things Jerry and Mike hope will be ironed out in a global deal is the controversial 35-year latency requirement created by the Department of Justice and the Department of the Navy for the Camp Lejeune Elective Option. It states that to qualify, a victim's earliest date of medical diagnosis or treatment must be not less than two years and not greater than 35 years from their last date of exposure at Camp Lejeune.
Jerry said, “A 35-year latency period for people to develop cancer, that is absolutely crap. That is nowhere. And if you talk to any real epidemiologist or medical expert, they'll tell you right out that that's not really true.” “Cancer is not on a clock,” Mike said. “When it happens, especially from environmental exposure, I mean, it takes decades sometimes to show up.”
If no agreement on a settlement is reached by the end of October, the court warns it will evaluate whether a complete shakeup of the plaintiffs' legal team is necessary. Missing the deadline means the plaintiffs' leadership group faces a court-mandated restructuring. Meanwhile, failure by the Department of Justice to meet the deadline could trigger severe court-imposed sanctions or push thousands of individual claims straight to trials.
Jerry said they’re still hopeful that legislation that’s been stalled for a year will be enacted, opening the cases to more than just the four judges at the Eastern District of North Carolina. “You're slapping all this all on one court,” he said, “That's crazy. I mean, yeah, you could you could slap the discovery for all of this on one court but as far as one court hearings, all these cases, no. This should have been the entire Fourth Circuit.”
The Ensuring Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Act remains gridlocked in the House Committee on the Judiciary. It was introduced by North Carolina Representatives Greg Murphy and Deborah Ross to serve as a "course correction" to the original Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022. In addition to opening more courts to the case, it would lower the burden of proof for victims, guarantee the right to jury trials, and cap attorney fees.
Mike isn’t sure why the bill is stalled. He said, “We haven't heard any justification or reasonable answer of why the bill hasn't moved in over a year now.” The bill has 95 cosponsors, and he said they will continue to advocate for its passage.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Guynn, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Torts Branch, addressed the court at a recent status conference, aiming to control the narrative surrounding the case. He claimed the face value of these claims tops $330 trillion. Guynn also pushed back against critics, insisting that the record shows the government is working hard to move the litigation forward efficiently, despite negative reporting from what he called "naysayers."
Mike said the government has controlled the narrative from the very beginning, “Including when they told the personnel aboard the base, ‘Don't worry about it. This trace, minutes of an unregulated compound in the water or substance in the water,’ to where you have the base environmental engineer in 1985 saying, ‘Oh, people weren't directly exposed to the pollutants.’ So, it's nothing new that they want to control the messaging.”
He also took issue with Guynn’s claims that compensating the victims would cost the U.S. more than $330 trillion. “If you do your simple math, there are 408,000 claims and if there are $330 trillion that are floating out there in claim money, that means every litigant or every claimant is going to have about $850 million waiting there for them,” he said, “It's ludicrous.” Mike added that the exact number to DoJ has claimed is the face value of the claims coincides with a total debt for every country on this planet.
All leadership attorneys have exactly one week to formally notify the court in writing if they accept their reappointments under these strict new rules.
But even if the settlement is reached in the next three months, Mike said there will still be a piece of justice missing for the victims of the contaminated water. “By the end of the contamination in 1985, 1987, there's a strong case for criminal negligence and the sad thing is, none of the people that perpetrated the cover-up -- because it was a cover-up -- nobody that perpetrated the cover-up has ever been held accountable for what they did,” he said.
And Jerry said they have taken away that which can never be brought back. “They killed my daughter. And I watched that child for two years go through hell before she died,” he said, “And I was lost, lost for years.”
