Other Baron & Budd Milestone Water Contamination Cases

Groundbreaking TCE Groundwater Contamination Case in Tucson, Arizona

In 1985, Baron & Budd filed suit on behalf of more than 1,600 Tucson-area residents against an aircraft manufacturer, the City of Tucson and the Tucson Airport Authority over TCE contamination of the community’s groundwater. Tucson, Arizona is the largest city in the United States that receives all of its drinking water from underground sources. Starting in the early 1950s, industrial solvents containing trichloroethylene, or TCE, began seeping through the sandy soil at the airport and a nearby aircraft company, polluting the wells that supplied water to Tucson’s Sunnyside community.

No one knew that the wells had been polluted, however, until an EPA-sponsored researcher discovered high levels of TCE and other solvent classified as probable and suspected carcinogens. Baron & Budd’s clients suffered a variety of injuries—including cancer—caused by their exposure to contaminants in the city’s water supply. Experts hired by Baron & Budd discovered that several unusual forms of cancer—particularly among children in the area—were at almost epidemic levels.

Through this 21-year legal battle, Baron & Budd helped define Arizona law on pollution coverage issues. The case is widely considered among the most important in U.S. history involving personal injuries caused by water pollution.

The legal-interest legal organization Public Justice presented the Baron & Budd legal team with its “Trial Lawyer of the Year Award” in 2006 for their work in this case. The award recognizes the trial attorney or attorneys who have made the greatest contribution to the public interest each year by trying or settling a precedent-setting case or cases.

Landmark MTBE Settlement on Behalf of the City of Santa Monica

In 2003, Baron & Budd represented the City of Santa Monica in a landmark MTBE contamination settlement with the major oil companies. MTBE contaminated five of Santa Monica’s eleven wells, forcing the city to begin importing water in 1996 for $3 million per year.

The money paid by the oil companies to settle the case provided the city with money to build a needed water treatment system to clean MTBE from the city’s water supply. It will also allow the city to continue buying water until the city’s own supply is clean and to monitor groundwater quality during and after the clean up. Design of the water treatment facility us underway, the city expects to be able to distribute clean water from the city’s wells again sometime in 2010.

Lawsuit that Closed Down the West Dallas Lead Smelter

In the West Dallas Lead Smelter case, Baron & Budd took on environmental contamination in our own backyard to protect future generations of children from exposure to lead, a potent neurotoxin. One of Dallas' largest public housing projects sat in a low-income neighborhood directly across the street from a secondary lead smelter. For many years, the smelter converted used automotive batteries into lead components for resale. Particulate emissions from the factory smokestacks literally blanketed the surrounding community with lead-bearing soot.

Baron & Budd represented more than 200 families in a lawsuit that eventually closed the lead smelter and paid sizable confidential settlements to court-supervised trusts for 445 children affected by lead poisoning. Although the neurological damage to these children is irreversible, the funds recovered in the settlement have enabled them to move into adulthood with medical, rehabilitative and vocational assistance. Closing the lead smelter and requiring the company to fund a community soil clean-up project also prevents future damage to other neighborhood children.

U.S. Supreme Court Cases that Curbed Class Action Abuse in Personal Injury Cases

Two of Baron & Budd’s most significant cases in terms of the precedent they set were Amchem Products v. Windsor and Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., in which the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Baron & Budd that asbestos companies could not cap their future liabilities to claimants who had not yet been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease by assigning by including them in a class action settlements.

Teaming up with other committed advocates, Baron & Budd argued that these unfair class action settlements violated the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution because they unconstitutionally limited the ability of individual asbestos victims to seek individual compensation for harms suffered. After a lengthy battle, the United States Supreme Court agreed with us, ultimately holding that both settlements were illegal and improper. These cases stopped powerful business interests from manipulating class action procedures to limit corporate liability to the people they harm

Precedent-setting Case to Hold U.S. Chemical Companies Accountable at Home for Harm They Caused Abroad

Too often, when their toxic products become unwelcome in their own country, companies will export them to countries with fewer protections for workers—countries where they will not be held liable for the harm they cause. In Alfaro v. Dow Chemical, Baron & Budd fought successfully to bring U.S. chemical companies into court in the United States to account for the harm they caused to workers overseas.

On behalf of young Costa Rican banana plantation workers, Baron & Budd sued large chemical companies like Dow Chemical for exporting DBCP, a pesticide used to sterilize the worms that cause damage to banana trees. Unfortunately, DBCP caused sterilization not only in the worms but also in the workers who labored in the plantations, the chemical companies knew about the problem.

Baron & Budd brought suit in Houston, Texas, world headquarters for one of the large chemical companies. The chemical companies protested that the lawsuit could only be brought in Costa Rica—where the workers would never be compensated for their injuries. Baron & Budd argued that many of the corporate decisions regarding the manufacturing, testing and sale of DBCP took place in Houston. In 1990, after years of litigation, the Texas Supreme Court held that Houston, Texas was an appropriate forum for the case, paving the way for compensation for the injured workers and forcing the chemical companies to deal with the harm they caused thousands of miles away.