BENTON – Honeywell, which successfully defended claims that it contaminated Metropolis with uranium, objects to defending the claims under different law.
On March 15, in U.S. district court, Honeywell counsel John Galvin of St. Louis opposed introduction of claims under the federal Price-Anderson Act.
The Act regulates liability for radiation exposure.
“Plaintiffs have been aware of these claims since 2018, yet they offer no explanation for their nearly three year delay in asserting them,” Galvin wrote.
He wrote that Honeywell and two magistrate judges told them their claims under state law would be dismissed.
“Plaintiffs made the conscious and strategic decision to disregard those judicial admonishments and press on with their state law case,” he wrote.
“Plaintiffs are manipulating the court and the legal process.”
James Clayborne of Belleville filed the suit for Roger Steward and others in 2018, while serving as majority leader of the Illinois Senate.
The suit alleges that from 1963 to 2017, a plant making uranium hexafluoride emitted radioactive and other toxic materials, and that the materials settled into soil and buildings.
It alleges negligence, trespass, nuisance, property damage, failure to warn, ultra hazardous activity, gross negligence, and emotional distress, all under state law.
The legal team included lawyers from West Virginia, Louisiana, and Chicago.
Honeywell moved to dismiss the complaint, claiming Price-Anderson preempted state jurisdiction.
Congress passed the Act to provide public funds for compensation of affected parties in nuclear incidents and to limit liability for such incidents.
In 2019, Clayborne amended the complaint to add claims under federal laws on clean air, resource conservation, and response compensation.
He wrote that Steward’s claims didn’t fall within the scope of Price-Anderson.
Galvin answered that Price-Anderson preempted claims under those laws just as it preempted claims under state law.
District Judge Staci Yandle dismissed state law claims last June with prejudice.
She dismissed the clean air claim with prejudice, finding plaintiffs referred to a regulation that applies only to federal agencies.
She also dismissed the resource recovery claim with prejudice, finding the law applies to solid waste and excludes nuclear materials.
She allowed the response compensation claim, finding Congress enacted the law to promote timely cleanup and ensure that costs were borne by those responsible.
“As to damages, plaintiffs may only pursue the costs of investigating and remedying the effects of a release or a threatened release of a hazardous substance into the environment,” she wrote.
Six months later plaintiffs moved to amend Price-Anderson into the complaint.
Galvin’s response alleged undue delay, bad faith, dilatory motive, repeated failure to cure known deficiencies, undue prejudice to Honeywell, and futility.
“Although the court’s ruling left only a tiny sliver of plaintiffs’ case, plaintiffs continued to aggressively pursue their burdensome, expensive fishing expedition,” he wrote.
He wrote that they intended to buy time to engage in inappropriate and overly expansive discovery.
He wrote that Honeywell produced more than 63,000 documents and allowed plaintiffs to inspect the site twice, and that since Yandle’s decision, plaintiffs served requests for information spanning 60 years with no geographical limit.
“Such requests are particularly burdensome to Honeywell as a global corporation,” he wrote.
He wrote that plaintiffs continue to pursue subpoenas on nearly 20 third parties including government agencies.
He wrote that the proposed complaint didn’t allege that plaintiffs experienced any exposure dose at or above the federally set limit.
“After three years, plaintiffs should be able to plead actual, not hypothetical, facts if they have them,” he wrote.
Yandle plans to hold trial in August.