Rocketdyne Faces 2 Suits Linking Field Lab to Health Concerns
Rocketdyne has been hit with two additional lawsuits claiming that decades of research into rocket engines and nuclear power at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory tainted the ground water and harmed the health and property of residents nearby.
In Van Nuys Superior Court, attorney Edward L. Masry filed both a class action and a separate lawsuit against parent company Boeing North American and its aerospace predecessors on Tuesday. The suits were filed on behalf of residents who live around the open-air field lab near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The 16 plaintiffs named in the second lawsuit include “Gunsmoke” star James K. Arness, who once owned property abutting the field lab and donated it years ago to the Brandeis-Bardin Jewish studies center.
The two lawsuits accuse Rocketdyne of “ultra-hazardous activity,” wrongful death, negligence, public and private nuisance, fraudulent concealment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent destruction of evidence needed for prospective civil litigation. Both suits seek general and punitive damages, but neither specifies a dollar amount.
The suits contend that cancer-causing agents, including trichloroethylene, once used at the 2,668-acre field lab, worked their way downhill into the drinking water and soil of surrounding communities.
“Rocketdyne has stated that the surrounding area is not impacted” by decades of rocket and nuclear research, said Toluca Lake-based attorney Masry. “That is false. The surrounding area is absolutely impacted, and we will prove that in a court of law.”
These two suits are the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against Rocketdyne alleging that “The Hill” polluted surrounding neighborhoods of Simi Valley, Chatsworth, Bell and Box canyons and West Hills with the toxic and radioactive remnants of its research.
They are unrelated to a class-action lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that claims Rocketdyne polluted and devalued the property of at least eight plaintiffs and possibly as many as half a million. That suit does not address the effects on residents’ health.
Rocketdyne media relations manager Dan Beck said company policy prohibits him from discussing the two new lawsuits.
But, “it’s clear among plaintiffs’ attorneys that it’s open season on Rocketdyne . . . because we’re believed to have ‘deep pockets,’ ” he added.
Specializing in “toxic torts,” Masry’s law firm is one of several that sued Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for causing cancers and other diseases in the tiny desert town of Hinkley, just west of Barstow, by allowing spent chromium to leak into ground water. The San Francisco-based utility settled the suit last year for $333 million.
The suits filed this week by Masry and two other law firms center on allegedly contaminated ground water believed to have caused cancers among Rocketdyne neighbors, four of whom have died. Two kinds of lawsuits were filed to keep plaintiffs’ options open, should either case be settled by Rocketdyne, the lawyer said.
One of many sources of ground-water contamination, according to the suits, was trichloroethylene--used for decades to flush hardware and rocket engine thrust chambers during rocket engine test-firing at the field lab.
The plaintiffs also contend that their water and soil were contaminated by activities at other Rocketdyne facilities, including the Atomics International facilities on Victory Boulevard and De Soto Avenue and the Hughes Aircraft facility on Fallbrook Avenue in the San Fernando Valley.
“There has been exposure to the contamination caused by releases from the Rocketdyne Facilities through domestic sources, such as drinking water and soil contaminants,” reads the suit that includes Arness. “Defendants have created and continue to create excessive human exposure to these carcinogenic and toxic contaminants . . . This exposure has substantially increased the risk that plaintiffs will develop cancer in the near future, if they have not done so already.”
While some contamination has been found on properties surrounding the field lab, Rocketdyne spokesman Beck said the “traces” of contamination in the soil and water “do not pose a health threat.”
These lawsuits come on the heels of a UCLA epidemiological study that found higher-than-expected cancer death rates among some radiation-exposed Rocketdyne workers. A second study of workers exposed to toxic chemicals is due out within a year.
According to Beck, the new suits “do not come as a surprise, as the community meetings [about the UCLA study] were swarming with attorneys.”
Simi Valley resident Edward J. Sheehan, 68, is among the plaintiffs who believe gulping the local tap water caused them cancer.
“I’ve been in good health--I’m not a boozer, and I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I was 39 years old,” said Sheehan, a retired cabby and 13-year Simi Valley resident. “Then all of a sudden--boom!--cancer of the esophagus.”
In the last year, Sheehan has had his esophagus and part of his stomach removed due to cancer. His back bears a scar the size of a shark bite. He can’t fathom any way he could have contracted the cancer other than from using tainted water.
“I honest-to-God believe Simi Valley is poisoned,” he said. “This water is junk. I know people who have lived here for years and won’t let their kids drink from the wells.”
Though one lawsuit lists more than a dozen plaintiffs, the class-action lawsuit names only two plaintiffs. Masry said, however, that the law firms involved have been approached by more than 100 possible class-action plaintiffs.
The substance of the two suits is similar. But, in addition to monetary damages, the class-action suit seeks to compel Rocketdyne to pay for medical monitoring and treatment of plaintiffs. It also seeks payment for imported drinking water supplies and ground-water cleanup.
