After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. Good God, Joe, the scientist said. It was, he says again, the right thing to do. Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired but the job had not come naturally to him. The whole business might have ended right there. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. Dont take anything at face value. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. But it was to me. The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit. A colleague on Tafts environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. He was 7 years old. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartletts case: Hers is one of five bellwether cases that will be tried over the course of this year. He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. I started seeing a story, Bilott said. The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long, Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects we told the agencies about this in 2001, and theyve essentially done nothing. 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Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. Discover more about the small businesses partnering with Amazon and Amazons commitment to empowering them. When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely., Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck more than 100,000 people in all. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border. There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially. When I asked Thomas Terp about Tafts reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didnt recall one. But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. 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Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Jim Tennant and his wife, Della, sold DuPont a 66-acre tract of land that became part of the Dry Run Landfill. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Tafts headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. Though nominally representing the Tennants their settlement had yet to be concluded Bilott spoke for the public, claiming extensive fraud and wrongdoing. The chemical site near Parkersburg, W.Va., source of the waste at the center of the DuPont class-action lawsuit. When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, Whites grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth. Two: If I do, is it harmful? With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. We were incurring a lot of expenses, Bilott says. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Tafts headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. One hundred fifty-three of these animals Ive lost on this farm, Wilbur says later in the video. ; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilotts class-action suit. Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. But he is still angry. Hes extremely stubborn. Bilott waited. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.. In any other class action youve ever read about, Deitzler says, you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public. Tennant burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap did not resemble a typical Taft client. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly. We complemented each other.. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. He hadnt really thought about the ethics of it, to be honest. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The visit to the Grahams farm was one of his happiest childhood memories. (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.) He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. One: Do I have C8 in my blood? They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. Bilotts strategy appeared to have worked. Every veterinarian that Ive called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they dont want to get involved. (In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. Bilott had what he needed. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations some dark, some green and textures. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged. 3M invented PFOA just four years earlier; it was used to keep coatings like Teflon from clumping during production. Bilott devised a new legal strategy. Sarah doesnt remember him speaking. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire populations personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, ALLEGRACE Plus Size Tunics Women Short Sleeve Summer Casual Tunic Tops for Leggings, ALLEGRACE Plus Size Tops for Women Dressy Double Layer Chiffon Floral Tunic Shirts, ALLEGRACE Plus Size Tops for Women Short Sleeve Lace Double Layer Shirt for Business Casual. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick., When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPonts 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. at the time. We have no idea what were taking., Bilott doesnt regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants, he said after a pause. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. claimed that it would announce a lifetime health advisory level for PFOA by early 2016.. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches. 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. My first impression was that he was not like other guys, she says. Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. I learned to question everything you read, he said. You could realize how bad that looks. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didnt recognize PFOA as a toxin if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? DuPont plans to appeal. We were getting frustrated, Bilott said. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? The Lawyer Who Became DuPonts Worst Nightmare, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress., In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldnt put on his socks, his arms felt numb. Rob is a private person. 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. DuPonts continuing refusal to accept responsibility is maddening to Bilott. It dont look like anything Ive been into before.. But his heels were so dug in. 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. The sound accelerated and slowed down. The companys internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. Bilott waited. I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. Bilott was tormented by the thought that we still hadnt been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it., Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. Three: If its harmful, what are the effects? Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. But its just not DuPont. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?. Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. 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. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia. It was one of those things where you cant believe youre reading what youre reading, he said. These were bad facts. He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad., Bilott is given to understatement. I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him, Winter says. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Since they dont want to get involved, Ill have to dissect this thing myself. I dont even like the looks of them, he says. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year. An interoffice memo sent in 1993 announced that for the first time, we have a viable candidate that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. Terps team at Taft was a leader in the field. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. This cows done a lot of suffering, he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. I just tried to get the best job I could. The firm would receive its contingency fee. Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. Its infuriating., As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. Bilott never represented a corporate client again. With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. Among the Madrid scientists recommendations: Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs and Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. No longer. I couldnt blame the Tennants for getting angry.. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. 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. in leadership positions. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. 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. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. Discussions were held at DuPonts corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. His taking on the Tennant case, Winter says, given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.. (To say that Rob Bilott is understated, his colleague Edison Hill says, is an understatement.) The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. It had the quality of a horror movie. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out to make a difference in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken. office finally took his call. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jims wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early 80s to DuPont. In August 2000, Bilott called DuPonts lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. 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. This is bad, Bilott said to himself. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. He hoped to become a city manager. In 2009, the E.P.A. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control. In other words, the Tennants didnt know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use. There was a gap in the data, Bilott says. during those decades. Class members were concerned about three things, Winter says. Im not allowed to talk to you, they said, when confronted. Bilott attended eight schools before graduating from Fairborn High, near Ohios Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What the hell is that stuff doing in your water? He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. Close-ups follow of the calfs blackened teeth (They say thats due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Tafts bottom line. He did not have a typical Taft rsum. It was not a peaceful wait. A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. Top subscription boxes right to your door, 1996-2022, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. He didnt complain. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. Thats what we were supposed to do. For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. I perceived that there were some What the hell are you doing? responses.. Bilott had every reason to walk away. He became an expert on the Environmental Protection Agencys regulatory framework, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilotts clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested. DuPont could argue and had argued that even if PFOA caused medical problems, it was only because factory workers had been exposed at exponentially higher levels than neighbors who drank tainted water. The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. Good God. It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. What did the insides of their heads look like? They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firms glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Tafts founders. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. Dont care what other people say. This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. But there was nothing. Im going to start at this head., The video cuts to a calfs bisected head. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It was especially damning to see these allegations against DuPont under the letterhead of one of the nations most prestigious corporate defense firms. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. He didnt show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president, says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilotts supervisor. PFOAs peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. In response to Bilotts most recent letter, the E.P.A. Two years later, Wilburs wife died of cancer. I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K., Deitzler says. Im not stupid, and the people around me arent stupid, he said. Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. Given what Bilott had documented in his Famous Letter, Taft stood by its partner. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. Bilott was proud of the work he did. 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 Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPonts own internal limit of one part per billion.