Was DuPont railroaded in Harrison County?
by admin on 23/06/10 at 5:40 am
The Charleston Daily Mail
By Don Surber
June 23, 2010
In 2008, a civil jury in Harrison County awarded nearly $400 million in damages to residents of Spelter who had sued DuPont.
The plaintiffs charged that DuPont was responsible for a smelting operation that residents said polluted the community with arsenic, cadmium, lead and zinc.
The award included $55 million to clean up the site, $130 million for a medical monitoring program, and $196 million in punitive damages.
The state Supreme Court cut the punitive damages in half in a March 26 ruling. This month, the court denied DuPont’s appeal of that ruling.
Justice Menis Ketchum has filed a dissent in which he argued that the plaintiffs failed to prove their case against DuPont.
He pointed to the credentials of the star witness for the plaintiffs, closing arguments that ran afoul of the law, and the fact that DuPont showed no malice that would trigger punitive damages.
“I dissent from the majority’s opinion, and believe that a judgment should be entered in favor of DuPont because the plaintiffs failed to prove the required elements of West Virginia’s medical monitoring and property damage law,” Justice Ketchum began.
“It is easy to enrage a jury against a large multi-national corporation. Nevertheless, our Constitution requires that plaintiffs must prove each of the elements of their case before the case can be submitted to the jury for its consideration – and the plaintiffs simply failed to prove their case.
“At the very least, DuPont should be granted a new trial on all issues, because of the continuous insertions of inadmissible evidence by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and their use of closing arguments prohibited by our law.”
In seeking the office, Ketchum cited his extensive courtroom experience having tried more than 170 cases and 30 appeals to the state’s highest court. Much of it was defending businesses.
“Plaintiffs’ soil scientist, Kirk Brown, testified that the dust containing lead, cadmium and arsenic from DuPont’s smelter caused cancer and other diseases,” Ketchum wrote. “The bill for his services up to the date of the trial was $910,000.”
So this is a million-dollar expert, give or take $90,000.
