USAT: How important is the court`s decision in upholding the status of a class action lawsuit in the case? Bilott`s best measure of safe exposure was DuPont`s internal limit of one part per billion. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new trial, he announced that he would reassess that number. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team consisting of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion. PFAS chemicals are used in products ranging from waterproof jackets to shaving foam, and they can enter water supplies in areas where they are disposed of or used for firefighting (especially at military bases, where they have been used for years). According to Bilott`s complaint, studies currently suggest that PFAS is present in the blood of about 99 percent of Americans. The class of chemicals has been widely associated with immune system disruption, while PFOA has been specifically linked to cancer and other diseases. Bilott`s latest lawsuit, as in his previous cases, claims that these companies had known for decades that PFAS chemicals, especially PFOA, could be linked to serious health problems, and that they still assured the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other U.S. government agencies that exposures to PFAS were harmless.
After three trials in which jurors handed down verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs, DuPont agreed in 2017 to settle the more than 3,500 remaining cases. As the lawsuit loomed, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the EPA mentioning a substance in the landfill with a cryptic name: “PFOA.” In all the years he has worked with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on a list of regulated documents, and he could not find it in Taft`s internal library. However, the chemistry expert he hired for the case vaguely recalled a newspaper article about a similar compound: PFOS, a soap-like agent used by tech conglomerate 3M to make Scotchgard. The longer it took the panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and pass them on to epidemiologists. Bilott advised members of the group in West Virginia and Ohio and often traveled to Washington to attend meetings at the EPA, which decided whether or not to issue advice on PFOA. “We incurred a lot of costs,” says Bilott.
“If the scientific panel didn`t find a link to the disease, we would have to eat everything.” But the crucial finding for the Tennant case was this: In the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided to find a landfill for toxic sludge dumped on the company`s premises. Fortunately, they had recently purchased 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would work perfectly. In February, these defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss, which the court rejected in September, allowing the case to continue. The next legal step is for the court to decide whether the trial can be continued on behalf of a national group. “We`re talking about chemicals that have generated billions in profits for many, many years,” bilott says. “This should be more than enough to fund the studies that need to be done.” DuPont reacted quickly and sought a muzzle order to prevent Bilott from providing the government with the information he discovered in the Tennant case. A federal court rejected this decision. Bilott sent his entire case to the E.P.A. USAT: The movie “Dark Waters” ends with legal victories for his clients in Leach v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The court ordered DuPont to pay for studies on the toxic effects of PFOA, and the company settled for $671 million to pay for bodily injury to affected residents of Ohio and West Virginia.
It seemed resolved. The Tennant case put Taft in a very unusual position. The law firm`s mission was to represent chemical companies, not to sue them. The prospect of taking over DuPont “made us think,” Terp admits. “But it wasn`t a particularly difficult decision for us. I firmly believe that our work on the plaintiff`s side makes us better criminal defense lawyers. “This case,” says Mr. Winter, “no matter how successful it is, will never replace in taft`s mind what it has lost in the legal field over the years.
“His adoption of the Tennant case,” Winter says, “given the kind of practice Taft had, I found it unimaginable.” It could take years before the case is resolved, and then years later for a potential panel to publish the final findings. (The panel depicted in the film took seven years to make its decision.) Few would have allowed Bilott to rest on his laurels for a few years and enjoy the royalties of his new book, aptly titled “Exposure,” before embarking on a series of inevitably long and arduous procedures. But Bilott says he has no plans to stop fighting PFAS contamination. Still, Kiger might have forgotten if his wife, Darlene, hadn`t already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Darlene`s first husband had been a chemist at DuPont`s PFOA laboratory. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he would not be involved in local politics around the case.) “When you worked at DuPont in this city,” Darlene says today, “you could have anything you wanted.” DuPont paid for his education, secured him a mortgage, and paid him a generous salary. DuPont even gave her a free supply of PFOA, which Darlene says used it as soap in the family`s dishwasher and to clean the car. Sometimes her husband would come home sick from work – fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting – after working in one of PFOA`s storage tanks.