In a legal brief filed in federal court, Department of Energy contractors said a Pike County, Ohio man waited too long, 15 years after being diagnosed with cancer, and more than four years after a local school closed, to allege the contractors contaminated the area around the Portsmouth Site.
Plaintiff Joshua Shaw blames contractors at the former DOE gaseous diffusion site for contaminating areas around Piketon, Ohio and in the process causing him to develop acute myeloid leukemia.
“In this case, it is hard to imagine how Plaintiff did not have every bit of information he needed to assert his PAA [Price Anderson Act] claims by sometime in 2019, and he most likely had that information many years earlier,” according to the contractors.
Shaw did not file suit, alleging Price Anderson Act violations, until November 2023, 15 years after his 2008 diagnosis, the contractors said in a March 28 reply to Shaw’s revised complaint. Price Anderson carries a two-year statute of limitations.
Defendants Centrus Energy Corp., U.S. Enrichment Corporation, Uranium Disposition Services, Bechtel Jacobs Company and LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, asked that the case be thrown out of the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio.
Other contractors, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, BWXT Conversion Services, and Mid-America Conversion Service, have been dropped from the case because they did not work at Portsmouth at the time Shaw was diagnosed, according to the legal filing.
While Shaw says there was no way for him to know about off-site radioactive contamination back when he was diagnosed, the contractors argue the plaintiff must have heard about federal lawsuits filed in 2019 on the heels of closure of the Zahn’s Corner Middle School, according to the contractor brief. The closure, and ensuing litigation, following traces of uranium and other contaminants being found at the school, received coverage in outlets such as the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Piketon News Watchman newspapers.
Shaw even has attorneys in common with Ursula McGlone, who filed one of the early legal cases after the school closed, according to the contractors.
