Hiring a Camp Lejeune Water Attorney Can Be Simple and Straightforward
A Camp Lejeune water attorney should be able to demonstrate a deep understanding of the Camp Lejeune water contamination tradgedy
Monday, September 19, 2022 - According to the U.S. Navy, around 5,000 Camp Lejeune water contamination cancer claims have been made in only the first month following the passage of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. Selecting a Camp Lejeune water attorney can seem intimidating but is simple and straightforward. Most people prefer to contact a Camp Lejeune water attorney with experience in suing the federal government or large multinational corporations that have caused their clients injury or deaths directly. Others prefer to contact their local VFW or other Legion representatives to see if they will be holding an open house meeting on the subject of Camp Lejeune water contamination. In either case a, Camp Lejeune lawyer needs to know more than just the basics of water contamination.
President Biden recently signed the Honoring Our Pact Act into law after it received approval from both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The Act is multi-faceted in that it provides increased health and financial benefits to those who have been injured by their military service. The Act broadens the definition of those who have been injured to include servicemembers who have been injured by inhaling or drinking water contaminated by toxic burn pit emissions in Iraq and elsewhere. It also included Vietnam veterans who have died from cancer or were otherwise injured by coming into contact with agent orange. At the core of the Act, however, is the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA). The CLJA removes the legal barriers where one was prohibited from suing the federal government for negligence or wrongful death and also eliminates the Statute of Repose, limiting the time a lawsuit could have been filed to ten years after the first bad act. The first 5000 lawsuits are just the beginning of what is sure to become the largest mass-tort lawsuits in American history. Legal experts estimate that more than 500,000 Camp Lejeune water lawsuits could be filed in the two-year window ending on August 1, 2024, surpassing the 325,000 lawsuits army veterans have filed against 3M and others involved in manufacturing and selling the allegedly defective 3M Combat Army Earplugs. More than 1 million Marines, civilian contractors, employees, and their young families passed through Camp Lejeune for at least a month between 1953 to 1987. The United States Marine Corps (USMC) admitted the base's drinking water was contaminated with volatile organic chemicals including but not limited to trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, vinyl chloride, and benzene in 1987, and shut the last of three wells.
Such a large number of lawsuits are unlikely to be tried one by one and probably will be organized into multidistrict litigation (MDL) under the supervision of a single federal judge. MDL is not a class-action lawsuit and is used to save time and money when plaintiffs have suffered similar injuries from a single product. In the Camp Lejeune case, that product is tap water. If you have lost a loved one who served, worked, or lived at Camp Lejeune from 1953 to 1987 to cancer, you should contact a Camp Lejeune water attorney who will file a claim with the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy Tort Claims Unit in Norfolk, Virginia, and then prepare a lawsuit seeking lump-sum monetary damages.
OnderLaw, LLC and The Overholt Law Firm, PC -