Bartlett, a 59 year-old resident of Guysville in Athens County, Ohio was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1997. Among other charges, Bartlett accuses DuPont management of negligence for allowing the leak, fraud and concealment for failing to inform the public of the dangers, and trespass and battery for letting the pollutants enter her bloodstream. DuPont attorneys blame Barlett’s kidney cancer on other factors instead, including obesity.
Monday marks the beginning of the first of two trials involving chemical giant DuPont’s liability over a years-long chemical leak at its Washington Works plant near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Plaintiff Carla Marie Bartlett is the first of two cases that will test DuPont’s liability in a 3,500-case series of multidistrict litigation. Bartlett, along with the other plaintiffs accuse DuPont of slowly leaking the chemical PFOA, also known as C-8, into the water supply of thousands of residents in West Virginia and Ohio, causing one of several debilitating illnesses. The plaintiffs claim that DuPont used the chemicals at the plant to help make teflon non-stick products, among others, since the 1950s. Due to the fact that the cases involve separate medical issues, the cases are tried on an individual basis; however the fact-finding process will involve all of the plaintiffs. Legal rulings made by Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Columbus will apply to all cases.
The Bartlett case will test how responsible DuPont will be for the leak in light of recent evidence linking C-8 to several ailments. As part of a 2004 settlement agreement from a class-action lawsuit filed by residents in 2001, the company began monitoring the health of those living near the plant, as well as install new water treatment components. The agreement also established a panel of scientists to determine if there is a link between C-8 and specific diseases. In 2012, the panel concluded that there was a “probable link” between C-8 and six illnesses: kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and thyroid disease. The company had itself disclosed in 1961 that C-8 contained some degree of toxicity. DuPont has acknowledged the panel’s findings and has stated that it no longer uses C-8 at its plants.
DuPont is instead challenging that the amount of C-8 released into the water supply was not a significant enough amount to have caused the diseases, and is asking plaintiffs to prove that it was C-8, and not other factors that contributed to the illnesses. Bartlett, a 59 year-old resident of Guysville in Athens County, Ohio was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1997. Among other charges, Bartlett accuses DuPont management of negligence for allowing the leak, fraud and concealment for failing to inform the public of the dangers, and trespass and battery for letting the pollutants enter her bloodstream. DuPont attorneys blame Barlett’s kidney cancer on other factors instead, including obesity. The case is expected to last about four weeks, with another test case, Wolf v. DuPont, slated to begin on November 30th. Depending on the results of the two cases, the remaining plaintiffs’ lawsuits may be withdrawn, settled, or possibly scheduled to trial.
Sources:
Columbus Dispatch – Kathy Lynn Gray
Reuters – Jessica Dye
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