A federal magistrate judge in Ohio will hold a preliminary pre-trial conference by telephone March 25 in a lawsuit filed in September against current and former contractors for the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The corporate defendants in the case on Tuesday asked the judge to throw out the litigation, arguing in a motion to dismiss that the case “just another retread of the same allegations that the Court has already dismissed.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers of the U.S. District Court for Southern District of Ohio ordered the conference Monday in a one-page order.
The filings come after plaintiffs in the case, some security guards and other former employees at the former gaseous diffusion plant complex, filed an amended complaint in January. The complaint alleges defendants have violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which carries potential prison terms, allegedly operating a “nuclear fraud enterprise” for financial gain.
The complaint alleges the companies and individual managers falsified records on workplace exposure to radioactive doses by security guards and other workers. The plaintiffs also allege the defendants allowed radioactive contamination to escape off-site to locations such as the nearby Zahn’s Corner Middle School, causing the board of education to stop holding classes there.
The two lead plaintiffs, former security guards Jeffrey Walburn and Charles Lawson, seek to establish a class-action case against the defendants that would include current and former employees at Portsmouth, as well as residents within a 50-mile radius. The potential amount at dispute in the suit is in excess of $5 million, according to the revised complaint.
The corporate defendants are Centrus Energy, U.S. Enrichment Corp., Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Uranium Disposition Services, BWXT Conversion Services, Mid-American Conversion Services, Bechtel-Jacobs, LATA-Parallax Portsmouth, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Several individuals, former supervisors at Portsmouth, are listed as defendants also.
