Mediator Foresaw a Lockheed Trial Win

The former appellate judge who mediated the deal under which Lockheed Martin Corp. paid $60 million to more than 1,300 neighbors of its Burbank plant said Friday that the aerospace giant would have won had the case gone to trial.

John K. Trotter, presiding justice of the state Court of Appeal until 1987 and now a professional mediator, said neighbors lacked medical evidence to prove that illnesses such as cancer were caused by toxic contamination of the water, soil and air surrounding the facility.

“In my opinion, they would not win this in Superior Court,” Trotter said during an interview at his office in Orange. “It was a very difficult case from the plaintiffs’ perspective.”

The confidential out-of-court settlement caused a furor when it was disclosed earlier this month, because residents who were not part of the deal said they had been unfairly left out. Last week, after bitter complaints, other neighbors sued Lockheed in federal court.

The lead lawyer in that lawsuit, Patrick J. Grannan, said he thought as many as 600,000 area residents could be involved because of contamination caused by Lockheed. The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, medical monitoring and other relief.

Trotter said events leading up to the deal were not secret, as many critics have complained, because advertisements were run in a local newspaper and numerous articles were written about the Lockheed cleanup. The group that settled grew from about 250 to about 1,350 residents, he said.

“It wasn’t perfect, I grant you,” he said. “But I find it hard to believe that people who had legitimate claims did not know about this.”

Trotter said that despite a strict confidentiality clause agreed to by all participants, both sides have since agreed to let him discuss certain aspects of the case in public.

Lockheed, which maintains that the former plant never posed health risks, had several reasons for settling, despite the weakness of the opposing case, according to Trotter.

First, he said, a jury decision would have been unpredictable and could have resulted in a greater payout by the company regardless of medical evidence. Secondly, Lockheed genuinely seemed to want to make amends with at least some Burbank residents since the company did in fact cause some contamination during its many years of production in the area, he said.

Trotter said the plaintiffs determined how to split the settlement based on various factors such as existing illnesses, proximity to the plant and when and for how long each plaintiff had lived in a given area.

About 80 residents included in the settlement were suffering from some type of cancer, Trotter said.

He said that of the $60 million, about $50 million was for personal injury and about $10 million for property damage. The individual payouts ranged from about $2,000 to $300,000, he said.

Research showed that contaminants that moved through the air, for example, were found most likely to influence residents southeast of the plant because of wind patterns, according to Trotter. The limit was about a mile away from the plant, he said.

“The great majority of the people in Burbank never sniffed one bit of contaminant,” he said. “The air never got to them.”

Contaminated ground water under Burbank remains a federal Superfund cleanup site. The ongoing cleanup, funded by Lockheed and other companies, is likely to require more than 20 years and cost about $150 million, officials said.

Burbank no longer draws on tainted water, but the amount of health damage, if any, before tests were performed is unknown, environmental officials said.

Maureen Curow, a spokeswoman for Lockheed, said the company remains bound by the confidentiality agreement surrounding the settlement.

“Both sides were aware that Judge Trotter was interested in making some statements about the handling of the settlement,” she said, adding that Lockheed thought highly of the job he did. “Lockheed Martin was very pleased.”

A representative for David Casselman, the lawyer who represented the neighbors who settled with Lockheed, said the law firm declined to comment on Trotter’s remarks or the settlement.

Grannan said Friday that he was not discouraged by the former judge’s statements.

“If Lockheed had reason to fear a large jury verdict [before] then they still have reason to fear a large jury verdict,” he said.