Entry Details

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Category: 
Online > Online Single Topic Coverage by a Team > Mid Atlantic

Title of entry: 
Marines, Toxic Water, and Lawyers: The Fight Over Billions for Camp Lejeune Vets

Issue or Publication date:
Jan. 30, 2023; March 23, 2023; May 8, 2023; July 20, 2023; Oct. 30, 2023

Publication name: 
Bloomberg Law

Publishing/parent company: 
Bloomberg Industry Group

View Website home page:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com

Description of the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

In the 1980s, researchers found that the water systems at Camp Lejeune, the Marine base and training ground in North Carolina, contained cancer-causing chemicals, the result of fuels and other contaminants seeping into the base’s water supplies. A campaign to document the scope and impact of the contamination started immediately, and the ensuing lawsuits languished for years. In 2016, a federal judge dismissed a consolidated case brought against the government by 900 former base residents, ruling that their suits were filed too late under North Carolina law. But in August 2022, Congress passed the Camp Lejeune Justice Act as part of a larger measure. It lets veterans seek damages if they were exposed for at least 30 days to the toxic water between August 1953 and December 1987. More than 130,000 claims have been filed with the Navy as a result, and that total could double or triple in the months to come. At least tens of thousands of disputed claims—either rejected by the Navy or unresolved—will end up in court.

This was an important story, since it involved a congressionally approved compensation program; potentially the largest mass-tort case ever, ostensibly impacting a million veterans, Defense Department workers, and their families; and the ensuing entanglement of lawyers and courts. In particular, the team’s reporting revealed for the first time that the government projects to spend as much as $21 billion, that a third or more of that money could go to lawyers, that lobbying and backroom dealing removed attorney fee caps from the legislation, and whole situation was turbocharged by a Wild West of legal marketing that itself has become a billion-dollar cottage industry.

Over the course of 2023, the team, led by senior reporter Kaustuv Basu and including his colleagues Emily Siegel and Roy Strom, produced over a dozen stories exploring all aspects of these developments, including breaking news scoops on key preliminary rulings in the case and the government’s assertion that claim demands have already exceeded $3.3 trillion. We are submitting five stories for consideration that focus on essential aspects of the legal wranglings and developments that seem to be overshadowing the victims Congress wants to help and who have been waiting for decades for restitution: a piece on how the Camp Lejeune tainted water litigation has become a potential record-setter for the amount invested and spent on advertising; another that looks at a small South Carolina law firm that spent millions to persuade lawmakers to abandon a provision setting caps on legal fees; a third that shows that nine months after the program was approved the Navy had received over 45,000 claims from veterans or their relatives but had not yet processed a single one; a fourth that litigation funders are betting billions of dollars into these cases, lured by the possibility of even bigger payouts; and a fifth that explores a wave of fraudulent claims that threatens to disrupt or taint payouts.

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https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/camp-lejeune-ads-surge-amid-wild-west-of-legal-finance-tech
Additional URLs, if needed:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/marines-toxic-water-and-lawyers-a-fight-over-billions-in-fees
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/veterans-on-borrowed-time-fume-over-delays-on-toxic-water-claims
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/litigation-funders-bet-billions-on-veterans-toxic-water-claims
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/product-liability-and-toxics-law/bogus-claims-threaten-to-taint-camp-lejeune-toxic-water-payouts