Attorneys for current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio said last week they want to limit duplication of paperwork from various citizen lawsuits in federal court accusing the companies of allowing dangerous amounts of contamination to escape outside the fence.
The lawyers for a group of eight contractors also said all discovery should be done by Nov. 15, 2023 in a wrongful death case suit stemming from the cancer death of a 13-year-old boy who lived near the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant site undergoing cleanup. The plaintiff, the boy’s father, has also agreed to that date.
Under a timeline agreed to by the parties, the plaintiff will make a settlement demand by Oct. 1, 2023, according to the four-page filing in the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio. The defendant will respond to the settlement demand by Nov. 1, 2023. “The parties agree to make a good faith effort to settle this case,” and possibly avert a trial.
The companies said the same lawyers representing the plaintiff in this case also represent local residents in a potential class action suit, led by Ursula McGlone, which also blames the same defendants for harmful off-site releases.
Zahn’s Corner Middle School closed in May 2019 after public disclosure of radiological contamination from enriched uranium on the campus. The school closure has come up in congressional hearings on DOE funding.
In the latest filing in the wrongful death suit, the defendant companies again denied liability for the death of Braden Aaron Lee Lykins from acute promyelocytic leukemia in 2021. The boy’s father, Brad Allen Lykins, filed litigation in June claiming his son’s illness stemmed from exposure to radiation released by the defendants.
“Defendants deny that they have released radiation that caused Plaintiff’s decedent’s alleged death from Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia, and Defendants further deny that they have violated the Price-Anderson Act,” according to the contractors’ Sept. 22 filing.
The defendant contractors consist of Bechtel Jacobs Co., BWXT Conversion Services,Centrus, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, Mid America Conversion Services, Uranium Disposition Services and USEC, according to the online filings.
The defendants said many of the same documents, legal and factual issues will be involved in both the Lykins case, the McGlone case and perhaps another lawsuit on the horizon. The two current federal lawsuits are playing out in Ohio’s southern district, under the docket of Chief U.S. District Court Judge Algenon Marbley.
