Pesticide Maker Blamed in Multimillion-Dollar Award : Ailing Boy Does Without as Firm Files Appeal
Jimmy Maness, 10, suffers from respiratory ailments, seizures, blood-sugar imbalance and many allergies because, a court held, he had the misfortune of living near a leaky chemical dump.
U.S. District Judge Odell Horton awarded Jimmy $2.3 million in damages and awarded $20 million more in punitive damages--including interest--to a group of his neighbors. He decided that Velsicol Chemical Co., an Illinois-based producer of pesticides, was liable for contamination of this rural community’s water supply from more than 300,000 drums of chemical waste buried in a landfill from 1964 to 1973.
Velsicol has appealed the ruling, but Jimmy could use some of that money now. He lives with his grandparents, both of whom try to make ends meet from Social Security disability payments.
“He’s getting very minimal care now,” said Jim Wilder, one of the boy’s lawyers. “This child’s life could be so different if he just had some money.”
‘Wish We Could Get Some’
Otis Maness, Jimmy’s grandfather and guardian, said, “I wish we could get some of this to spend on Jimmy because doctors don’t give him much of a chance of living a long time.”
But any payoff seems a long way off. “Once you get the judgment, you’re only halfway there,” Wilder said. “Then you’ve got to collect.”
Velsicol has acknowledged that chemicals from its dump contaminated the water supply in this area of western Tennessee, but it contends that its disposal methods were acceptable at the time.
“Velsicol is of the belief that the judgment is not supported by the evidence,” Rick Mueller, an attorney for the company, said from his office in Rosemont, Ill.
The wastes were dumped in a company-owned landfill, Wilder said, and 55-gallon drums containing the chemicals often were crushed by bulldozers to make room for others.
About 125 residents of Hardeman County, suffering from rashes, blurred vision, nausea, difficult breathing, liver and kidney damage, emotional instability, an increased risk of cancer and various other illnesses, filed a $2.5-billion class-action suit against Velsicol in 1978.
Woman Dies
One of them, Nancy Sterling, 62, died Oct. 20. Her husband, Steve, was in a group of five who won the first damage awards. Wilder said the damage awards may ultimately reach $80 million.
Sterling argued that he and his wife incurred lung and heart disease from drinking the tainted water for years. Nancy Sterling died of a heart attack.
Wilder said the Velsicol case is unusual in that such suits are generally settled out of court. “As far as I know, it’s the only toxic-waste action that has made it to judgment,” he said.
After the judgment Wilder asked Velsicol “if they were willing to negotiate, but they said no.”
Horton split the case into two stages, telling Wilder and his associates to pick five residents whose claims were representative of the group.
He heard 65 days of testimony over two years before ruling in August that Velsicol must pay the first five plaintiffs more than $5 million in actual damages and must pay the class-action group $7.5 million in punitive damages. He also ordered the company to pay interest on the money, bringing the total award to more than $22 million, Wilder said.
Award Appealed
On Oct. 3, the company filed an appeal of Horton’s ruling with the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Wilder said the actual damages for the other residents will be presented in the second stage of the proceedings.
“We’ve got others that were hurt just as bad or worse than the first five,” Wilder said. “I feel the rest of the class will average $500,000 each.”
Steve Sterling, 63, a prime mover in getting the lawsuit to trial, was awarded $673,000 in actual damages.
“I think they’ll pay us something out of it, but I think they’ll put it off for as long as they can,” Sterling said.
Sterling said authorities were slow in responding to complaints that water in area wells was contaminated, even though he cleaned large globs of foul-smelling material from his well pump.
State inspectors finally ordered the dump closed in 1973. Five years later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned residents not to drink water from their wells.
For a while, the National Guard trucked in drinking water.
Trouble Finding Lawyers
Sterling said the residents had trouble finding lawyers to take their case since it was expected to be long and expensive.
Wilder said lawyers representing the residents have spent $750,000 of their own money in bringing the suit to trial.
Much of that expense, he said, went for expert witnesses and for a computer model of how water flows in the area of the waste dump.
Seven lawyers have contributed time and money to the case, Wilder said, and legal fees for the Toone residents will vary from one-third to one-half of the judgments they receive.
Since the dump was closed, Velsicol has paid for a community water system to replace the contaminated wells, and Sterling said the company offered cash settlements to residents agreeing to drop their damage claims.
“The most they offered me was $16,000. I told them no,” he said.
Struggle to Pay
Meanwhile, at Jimmy Maness’ home, his grandmother, Margaret Maness, 46, said she struggles to pay for the youngster’s medicine and for the air conditioning he must have to breathe at night.
