robert bilott 3m

When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try. ROBERT BILOTT: DuPont is knowingly poisoning 70,000 local residents for the last 40 years. He thinks the removal of his prostate eliminated the cancer. As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated sub­stances and imperil Taft’s bottom line. But an industry-threatening class-action suit against one of the world’s largest chemical corporations was different. Bilott found the figure ‘‘mind-blowing.’’ The toxicologists he hired had settled upon a safety limit of 0.2 parts per billion. The film demonstrates how one individual can stand up and win a major victory for the people. “We will continue to work with our former customers to ensure that unused 3M firefighting foam is properly handled.”. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Robert Bilott joins the … The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. office finally took his call. Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan.The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. In Little Hocking, the water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. ‘‘To think that you’ve negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested,’’ he says. ‘‘I started seeing a story,’’ Bilott said. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn’t diagnose, and they needed the money. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. But when we look at that evidence there is no cause and effect for adverse human health effects at the levels we are exposed to as a general population.”. ‘‘Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?’’. ‘‘You can’t ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think. What did the insides of their heads look like? But it’s just not DuPont. Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. “We know they’re there," he said. It was not a peaceful wait. ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah, the 3M Company actually announced in 2000 that they would stop making these chemicals. ‘‘There was relief,’’ Bilott says, understated nearly to the point of self-effacement. “It increasingly appears to be only a matter of time in our opinion before at least some PFAS chemicals are declared hazardous substances” under federal Superfund guidelines, Inch wrote. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought you’d see written down.’’. Tennant — burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap — did not resemble a typical Taft client. And it’s 12 different epidemiological studies, spanning seven years, costing tens of millions of dollars. DuPont’s scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants’ remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. But it’s not going to be covered up, because I’m going to bring it out in the open for people to see.’’, The video shows a large pipe running into the creek, discharging green water with bubbles on the surface. At Taft, he asked to join Thomas Terp’s environmental team. CINCINNATI — Jeff Hermes worked for two decades as an airport fireman, spraying acres of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) to suffocate flames from jet engine fuel. A Teflon frying pan, one of the first products PFAS were used in to ensure food would not stick when cooked. DuPont purchased PFOA in 1951 to make Teflon, which quickly made its way into the kitchens of millions of American households. The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick.’’, When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPont’s head of global media relations, wrote in an email: ‘‘DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA. He had become a threat not merely to DuPont but also to, in the words of one internal memo, ‘‘the entire fluoropolymers industry’’ — an industry responsible for the high-performance plastics used in many modern devices, including kitchen products, computer cables, implantable medical devices and bearings and seals used in cars and airplanes. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. ‘‘One hundred fifty-three of these animals I’ve lost on this farm,’’ Wilbur says later in the video. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. Two years passed without any findings. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged. Robert Bilott, the attorney who won the landmark class-action suit against DuPont in West Virginia, also sued 3M in Minnesota in 2004. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle’s health problems. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. ‘‘I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. “There’s increasing evidence and recent studies that actually highlighted concerns about the chemicals that are still being used in products occurring in high levels in dust in the home that may actually be inhaled or dermally absorbed through the skin. ‘‘We were incurring a lot of expenses,’’ Bilott says. But Bilott could not predict what those results would be. ‘‘We see a situation,’’ Joe Kiger says, ‘‘that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it’s everywhere, it’s global. ‘‘I suppose it wasn’t so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. ‘‘It’s about high time that someone in the state department of something-or-another got off their cans.’’, At one point, the video cuts to a skinny red cow standing in hay. ROBERT BILOTT: Yeah, the study we did in West Virginia ended up being one of the largest studies ever done of a chemical. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants’ neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. But a few of them testified before Congress in September, including 3M, which made the firefighting foam that Hermes used for decades. I don’t think I had any clue of what that involved.’’. ‘‘Good God, Joe,’’ the scientist said. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. at the time. “You can take steps to reduce contamination. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. I perceived that there were some ‘What the hell are you doing?’ responses.’’. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations — some dark, some green — and textures. Two: If I do, is it harmful? In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. DuPont even gave him a free supply of PFOA, which, Darlene says, she used as soap in the family’s dishwasher and to clean the car. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Hardwick is represented by attorney Robert Bilott, who successfully sued DuPont on behalf of people in West Virginia and Ohio who had been exposed to PFOA from a plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg’s lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. It was a brief conversation. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. “Our case isn’t just about firefighters,” Bilott said. The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. Among the Madrid scientists’ recommendations: ‘‘Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs’’ and ‘‘Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. At this point, I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate it,” Andrews said. SARAH BILOTT: [played by Anne Hathaway] You need to tell me what in the hell is going on. Bilott was proud of the work he did. They did not tell the E.P.A. The I-Team contacted all companies named in the complaint. I liked that philosophy.’’ Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. He became a partner at the firm in 1998. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong. ‘‘He didn’t show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president,’’ says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilott’s supervisor. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. ‘‘Class members were concerned about three things,’’ Winter says. DuPont actually jumped in at that point and started making PFOA at its own plant down in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Joseph Kiger, a night-school teacher in Parkersburg, called Bilott to ask for help. Of seven births, two had eye defects. And I’m OK with that because I’m still alive and I’ve got friends that aren’t.”, Let the I-Team investigateSend us your story tips today to iteam@wcpo.comOr call 513-852-4999, Case aims to force chemical companies to fund research on PFAS. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ‘‘digestion ponds’’: open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. That’s what we were supposed to do.’’ For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. “There are a lot of inconsistencies in the data,” she said. He did not have a typical Taft résumé. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. ‘‘It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before.’’. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.’’. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. ‘‘I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,’’ Winter says. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ he said. “The class action that we’re trying to bring at this point is for appropriate health studies and testing,” Bilott said. ‘‘Don’t take anything at face value. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. Its November 2019 report found no results above 5 ppt, which is well below the EPA’s most restrictive guideline. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? ‘‘Let’s put it that way.’’. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. ‘‘It was stressful,’’ Bilott says, ‘‘not to know what the heck was going on.’’. We speak to the famed environmental lawyer Rob Bilott about his 20-year battle with DuPont over contaminated drinking water in West Virginia from toxic chemicals used to make Teflon. ‘‘There’s something really bad going on here.’’. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. ‘‘It was something you could do to make a difference.’’ When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. In response to Bilott’s most recent letter, the E.P.A. He didn’t complain. Millions of Americans might someday benefit from a class action lawsuit filed against manufacturers of forever chemicals by Rob Bilott, the Cincinnati lawyer made famous by the movie “Dark Waters.” The Taft Law partner won a $671 million settlement on behalf of 3,500 plaintiffs who alleged chemical giant DuPont contaminated their drinking water with PFOA, a forever chemical used to make Teflon. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: ‘‘DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health.’’ The term ‘‘support confidence’’ seemed bizarre, as did ‘‘protective of human health,’’ not to mention the claim that DuPont’s own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines. Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. Hermes is among millions of Americans who might someday benefit from a class action lawsuit filed against manufacturers of forever chemicals by Rob Bilott, the Cincinnati lawyer made famous by the movie “Dark Waters.” The Taft Law partner won a $671 million settlement on behalf of 3,500 plaintiffs who alleged chemical giant DuPont contaminated their drinking water with PFOA, a forever chemical used to make Teflon. Other defendants include 3M Company, AGC Chemicals, Daikin Industries Ltd, Solvay Specialty Polymers and 3M Company. Robert Bilott, who successfully sued DuPont over PFOA, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of everyone in the U.S. who has PFAS chemicals in their blood A CLASS ACTION lawsuit against 3M, DuPont, and Chemours was filed this week on behalf of everyone in the United States who has been exposed to PFAS chemicals. ‘‘His taking on the Tennant case,’’ Winter says, ‘‘given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.’’. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely — they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world.’’, Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. The papers showed DuPont began buying the chemical in 1951 from 3M, the U.S. company that created it in a laboratory. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. His doctors didn’t know what was happening. “You were drenched in foam,” Hermes said. Bilott scored two recent wins. For most people, the biggest risk of contamination is from water pollution, said David Andrews, senior scientist for Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. When would they get relief? Denise R. Rutherford Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs The 3M Company. Denise Rutherford, senior vice president for 3M Co., testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Sept. 10, 2019. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. Hardwick is represented by attorney Robert Bilott, who successfully sued DuPont on behalf of people in West Virginia and Ohio who had been exposed to PFOA from a plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Sarah doesn’t remember him speaking. in leadership positions. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn’t recognize PFOA as a toxin — if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldn’t be involved in the local politics around the case.) In October 2018, the lawyer filed a new lawsuit against several companies, including 3M, … ‘‘If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, we’d have to eat it all.’’, Clients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. Against DuPont’s protests, the order was granted. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.). ‘‘You can imagine what some of the other companies that Taft was representing — a Dow Chemical — might have thought of a Taft lawyer taking on DuPont,’’ Larry Winter says. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. ‘‘DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them,’’ says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilott’s legal team. ‘‘I learned to question everything you read,’’ he said. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. Join Facebook to connect with Robert Bilott and others you may know. The Northern Kentucky Water District also uses carbon filtration to remove PFAS chemicals, but its water intake pumps in the Ohio River saw some of the state's highest levels of HFPO-DA, a replacement chemical for the more toxic PFOA compound that DuPont phased out in 2009. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPont’s own internal safety standard. The suit, rather than seeking compensation, requests that the companies fund independent, scientific … For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle — one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia — though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. But it never got to the end user, which was us,” he said. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont’s own internal limit of one part per billion. … A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. That’s 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. Panel Two. Well, after DuPont was sued by the EPA in 2004, they agreed to settle that case, and then right after, announced a phase-out of any … Bilott learned from the documents that 3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. And the end result was independent scientific confirmation that this chemical causes diseases, including … In 2001, it could not even be proved that exposure to PFOA in public drinking water caused health problems. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? ‘‘It seemed like it would have real-world impact,’’ he said. ‘‘We were getting frustrated,’’ Bilott said. You knew. Some had been doing so for decades. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilott’s clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. “These are dangerous chemicals. Close-ups follow of the calf’s blackened teeth (‘‘They say that’s due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink’’), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. Bilott called DuPont's toxic chemical leak "a massive public health threat." A colleague on Taft’s environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. ‘‘In any other class action you’ve ever read about,’’ Deitzler says, ‘‘you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. Furniture Fair Power Pack Feed Our Children. A lead plaintiff soon presented himself. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ‘‘poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.’’ In other words, the Tennants didn’t know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.’’, Bilott is given to understatement. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. ‘‘I’m not allowed to talk to you,’’ they said, when confronted. Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. The only part that didn’t make sense was his firm: No Taft lawyer, to anyone’s recollection, had ever filed a class-action lawsuit. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. But for the real Rob Bilott, the work of taking the industry to court is far from over. “It’s everyone who has these chemicals in their blood.”. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firm’s glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Taft’s founders. He was 7 years old. These were bad facts.’’ He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. A plaintiff needs to prove only that he or she has been exposed to a toxin. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly. ‘‘It just felt like the right thing to do,’’ he says today. And now, Robert Bilott's story is the focus of the film Dark Waters, in theaters on November 22. View the profiles of people named Robert Bilott. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Then Wilbur Tennant came along. (In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public. Bilott achieved a class-action settlement with DuPont in 2004, part of which paid for a six-year health study. Bilott ha passat més de vint anys de la seva vida lluitant en casos sobre abocaments de productes químics perillosos sobretot de les substàncies químiques com l'Àcid … He’s extremely stubborn. “The changes in your home life, your marriage, the relationship with your spouse is forever different,” he said. Discussions were held at DuPont’s corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. “We accept that there are associations, which are like leads, places that we should continue to look. In 2009, the E.P.A. But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. 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