Lab’s Neighbors Put In Class of Their Own

The news may come when a canvasser knocks at a Simi Valley door. Or when an anonymous-looking letter addressed to “current resident” lands in a West Hills mailbox. Or through a baritone announcement on the radio.

Sometime soon, probably in early fall, as many as half a million people in the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley will learn what their lawyers already know: They are plaintiffs in a landmark class-action lawsuit alleging property damage against the parent company of Rocketdyne and its Santa Susana Field Lab.

They are mothers who lost children to leukemia. Neighbors who have long cast a wary eye toward “The Hill.” And some who have never heard of the field lab.

“I don’t know if Rocketdyne even affects me--I haven’t given it much thought,” said Korina Dornan, an X-ray technician and mother whose east Simi Valley home lies a few miles from the lab--but within a possible contamination zone.

She learned of the suit Friday and concedes that she knows little about the company, other than that a worker health study found higher-than-expected cancer death rates among some field lab workers.

“I guess I would want to see what the [class-action] notice says before I decide to stay in the lawsuit,” she added. “If it has anything to do with property values or anything seeping down our way, I may be interested.”

The mourning and the idealistic, the mercenary and the maybe interested--they will all become part of the proceedings in the cherry-paneled Courtroom 690 of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

That is where Judge Audrey B. Collins on Monday granted class-action status to a group of people who believe chemicals and radionuclides from Cold War research have left their air, water and soil a toxic mess.

While a huge victory for plaintiffs, the granting of class certification is not an evaluation of the case’s merits. But it does allow the lawsuit to move forward with an oversized batch of plaintiffs.

The suit could spend years twisting its way through hearing after hearing, legal machination after legal machination. If not dismissed eventually, the case could keep scores of lawyers, toxicologists and air and water experts busy.

But for the people who live in the alleged contamination area--oddly shaped chunks of the region bordered by the Santa Susana Mountains and the Ventura, Moorpark and San Diego freeways--the experience may be more personal, legal experts say.

For many of the plaintiffs, the trial will be gratifying, so long as they understand the limits of the legal system. Others may see their hopes toppled.

“In toxic torts, there’s just so much uncertainty,” said Jean Macchiaroli Eggen, a law professor at the Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Del. “Once you’re grouped in a large number, there’s some feeling of empowerment and some feeling of security that whatever they may be facing, it’s not just one person versus a corporation.”

One thing plaintiffs must understand, she added, is that the legal system is better at offering money than parceling, particularly when out-of-court settlements are reached.

For the profitable corporation being sued for its toxic legacy, the announcements telling people of the class-action lawsuit will be nearly as ominous as pink slips.

“I think some people will see this as the lawsuit lottery. ‘Gee, maybe I can make a fast buck,’ or a slow buck, the way the legal system works . . .,” said Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck. “I hope people don’t see these [class-action] notices as a ‘You may already have won,’ Publisher’s Clearinghouse announcement.”

Count Chatsworth resident Arline Mathews among the plaintiffs. Even though she says she doesn’t expect to see 67 cents if the case is settled.

The 76-year-old has lived within five miles of the field lab since 1965.

Coming from a family with no cancer history for generations, Mathews recently watched her 45-year-old son--so health-conscious that he shunned sugar and caffeine--die of inoperable brain cancer. Meanwhile, his 5-year-old son is in remission from leukemia.

Resident Believes Air, Soil Are Fouled

While Mathews doesn’t know whether the chemicals that launch rockets also spawned her son’s cancer, she firmly believes that Rocketdyne fouled the air and tainted the ground water.

So she will sue as a passive plaintiff in the class-action suit.

“I know nothing can bring Bobby back--not money, not anything . . .,” Mathews said. “And of course I’m concerned with the lofty aspirations--preserving democratic society and cleaning up the environment. I’m also concerned about my neighbors and their kids and their kids’ kids . . . .

“I want to see Rocketdyne hit,” she continued. “And hit hard.”

The lead lawyer suing Rocketdyne in federal court, A. Barry Cappello, has received a batch of calls from residents like Mathews since the ruling Monday.

Many are asking how to join the case, when, in reality, the suit should come to them.

By Aug. 17, Cappello and his colleague, J. Paul Gignac, will have to notify the court how they intend to find all their plaintiffs and notify them of the suit.

Meanwhile, Rocketdyne attorneys have said they will attempt to have the case thrown out by arguing that a decade’s worth of media reports about the field lab should have warned people to sue earlier.

The statute of limitations strategy proved effective recently in two similar, but unrelated, cases pending in state court.

Reaching all the plaintiffs will be a challenge, acknowledged Cappello, who has tackled the banking industry and the perpetrators of the Union Oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel during his years as Santa Barbara’s city attorney and in private practice.

“Notification is a matter of intense discussion in the firm right now,” he said. “We’re thinking about mail. We’re thinking about door-to-door. We’re thinking about a variety of electronic media--radio, cable TV--but we’ve got to check the demographics for targeting.”

Areas of Possible Contamination Cited

Experts working for the lawyers calculated the areas of possible contamination using emissions from two facilities now owned by Boeing North American--the Santa Susana lab in the hills between Simi Valley and Chatsworth and the Atomics International facility on Canoga Avenue.

The suit involves two other facilities--Atomics International on DeSoto Avenue and Hughes Aircraft on Fallbrook Avenue--for which emissions information is not yet available.

In the notices, residents will also learn that they can duck out of much of the class-action lawsuit if they want to. Plaintiffs cannot opt out of a medical monitoring program, if the court creates one, but they can skirt the property claims.

That way, people who don’t want to sue Rocketdyne for property damage--as well as those who believe they have such strong cases against the company that they would rather go it alone--can do so.

Those who stick with the suit would be passive players. While the eight named plaintiffs, or “class representatives,” would be involved in the day-to-day of the suit, the thousands of other plaintiffs might only be consulted for the major events--say, the dismissal of the case, a judgment or a possible settlement.

Cappello said he couldn’t venture a guess about how many plaintiffs would choose to leave, but he predicted that many would stay. “The question to decide is, ‘Am I going to be compensated enough in the results of a class action,’ ” Cappello said. “For most people, [the suit] is great . . . . Little people get rolled over and crunched by big corporations. Now, they don’t have to go out and hire their own lawyer and file their own suit.

“The only downside is if you believe your case would be better tried by your own individual lawyer--then go out and get your own individual lawyer.”

Rocketdyne’s Beck can think of a number of downsides to the sweeping suit.

“I think they’re scaring people unnecessarily,” he said, adding that no chemical contamination from Rocketdyne has been found off-site except in two neighboring, uninhabited areas.

“There will be a whole gamut of reaction to this,” Beck continued. “There are going to be people who are grieving from some [unrelated] tragic death or illness and think they will finally get some compensation for it. I think that’s misleading . . . . So we’re going to continue to fight this case. It’s baseless and founded on very bad science.”

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Rocketdyne Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit claiming Rocketdyne has damaged its neighbors’ property applies to people who have lived in the highlighted areas any time since 1946 or who now own property there. The areas marked represent air and water experts’ opinions of how far toxic contamination could have traveled from the company’s aerospace facilities. So far, no contamination has been found in any residential areas.

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The four facilities owned by Boeing North America that lawyers believe could have contaminated the surrounding areas:

1. Santa Susana Field Lab

2. Atomics International

3. Atomics International

4. Hughes Aircraft

Source: Cappello & McCann law firm