Rocketdyne Class-Action Letters Poised for Delivery in Late October
Unless Rocketdyne wins a last-ditch appeal, letters will be sent the day before Halloween notifying up to 500,000 neighbors of the company’s aerospace facilities of a pending federal class-action lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that Rocketdyne’s decades of nuclear and rocket-engine testing and research at four facilities in the Simi and San Fernando valleys--including the Santa Susana Field Laboratory--fouled the property and could compromise the health of neighbors.
Without making any decision about the case’s evidence or merits, a judge allowed the suit to move forward as a class action on July 13.
But a lawyer with Boeing North American, Rocketdyne’s parent company, believes notifying residents now would be premature because plaintiffs’ lawyers have not proven that dangerous chemicals and radionuclides migrated from Rocketdyne properties to the surrounding soil, air and water.
Receiving first-class letters that begin, “This notice may affect your rights. Please read it carefully,” would frighten scores of Rocketdyne neighbors unnecessarily, said Gary M. Black, a chief counsel with Boeing.
“The key thing is we think the class certification was approved based on speculation and the absence of evidence of contamination,” Black said Monday. “That is the most important thing. We, and the nearby residents, are about to be subject to this massive notice and this big, expensive piece of litigation without any evidentiary foundation . . . .”
On Oct. 5, Rocketdyne lawyers will ask U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins’ permission to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals her earlier decision to certify the class-action lawsuit against the aerospace giant. The defense lawyers will further seek to have notification letters delayed until the higher court decides whether to hear the appeal.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys oppose any delay, contending that Rocketdyne wants to escape a deluge of personal injury lawsuits that may follow the notification letter.
“The fewer people who know about the [suit], the less chance people will put two and two together and . . . say, ‘Wait a second, there’s something going on here. We’ve got cancer in our family, but we don’t smoke and we don’t have a hereditary history of cancer, and we’re here in the middle of this contamination area. Maybe our cancer is from that Rocketdyne outfit,’ ” said Santa Barbara lawyer A. Barry Cappello.
“The fewer people who know, the better off Rocketdyne is,” he said.
Barring the appeal, letters will be sent to all businesses, residents and landlords owning property in the so-called “class area,” which covers about two-thirds of the area bounded by the Ventura, Moorpark and San Diego freeways and the Santa Susana Mountains.
In addition to the 2,668-acre field lab between Simi Valley and Chatsworth, the class-action suit also involves the neighbors of aerospace facilities: at the corner of Canoga Avenue and Victory Boulevard, at the corner of De Soto Avenue and Nordhoff Street and at the corner of Fallbrook Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard.
It is estimated that about 200,000 to 500,000 people will receive the notices.
The neighbors will then have until Nov. 30 to decide whether to remain in the class-action lawsuit or exclude themselves. Those wishing to opt out must reply in writing. Past and current employees of Boeing and its subsidiaries cannot be plaintiffs in the suit, which seeks medical monitoring and unspecified damages.
People who receive the notices may react differently to the allegation that their property could be contaminated, predicted John P. Dwyer, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
“Some people will get exercised about it; some people will go, ‘Yawn,’ ” said Dwyer, who specializes in environmental and property law. “Some people will be worried or scared, some will ignore it and some will not care. Half the people probably won’t open [the notice] anyhow.”
