Camp Lejeune Justice Act Claims May Take Until August 2024 To Be Addressed

Camp Lejeune Justice Act claims are expiring and lawsuits now flood the North Carolina court

Wednesday, June 14, 2023 - The Camp Lejeune Justice Act may be turning into a full-blown fiasco as the new law allowing US Marines and others to sue the US government for their water cancer approaches its one-year anniversary. It will be a year in August of 2023 since the law was passed and not a single Camp Lejeune Justice Act claim has been paid or even addressed administratively by the Navy as far as anyone can tell. Moreover, others critical of the lack of action and the continuing stream of empty promises by lawmakers are now calling the Camp Lejeune water contamination crisis a conspiracy. They accuse the military of deliberately failing to address the water contamination problem and failing to warn residents of Camp Lejeune that their lives and the lives of their family members were in danger if they drank the tap water. US Marines and civilian employees that worked on the base, their loved ones, and others are dying from cancer while waiting for money to pay for their medical treatments. The CLJA promised Camp Lejeune water cancer victims that they could file a claim for lump-sum compensation and that if their claim was denied or delayed, they had the legal remedy of filing a Camp Lejeune water contamination lawsuit in the Eastern District of North Carolina. As of the latest known survey, more than 10,000 lawsuits have been filed in this regard as their claims seem to have been largely ignored by the Navy. That number could grow to over 100,000 by the time the two-year window for filing a CLJA claim expires in August 2024. More than one million people, service members, and civilian employees worked or lived on the base from 1953 to 1987 and presumably drank the contaminated water unknowingly. Millions more have been born to mothers who were pregnant while on the base.

North Carolina court consists of only four judges and it would take decades to adjudicate all of the claims. One North Carolina judge has promised a "rocket docket" where hundreds of claims will be grouped together and adjudicated in a single session. Similar cases could be grouped by the type of cancer one has or died from. Damages vary, however, with each individual, and a settlement is estimated to cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. The Camp Lejeune Justice Act, while promising the right to file a claim, also voids one's right to seek punitive damages which could have amplified jury awards ten-fold. The surviving spouses and children of those who died could be a separate category, as could the parents who have had children die from cancer as a result of having had a mother who was pregnant while living at Camp Lejeune. Thousands of women who were pregnant while at Camp Lejeune have had multiple miscarriages each and also have had children die at birth. Simply reading each case to determine its classification could take years. If a settlement offer is to be proposed it would have to wait until August of 2024 so that all of the cases that could be filed were filed. The Department of the Navy is in the process of setting up a central database where each case information would be input. There is no way to know how many claims will be filed and the total amount of compensation being asked for until the window allowing claims to be filed has closed.

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