A 75-year-old man in Belpre, Ohio, developed ulcerative colitis. He has filed apersonal injury lawsuit seeking damages from the DuPont Company. The lawsuit alleges that his illness was caused by the company releasing a toxic chemical into the water in Ohio County from its Washington Works plant. The lawsuit was filed in federal court.
The chemical is called C8. A prior lawsuit linked C8 to causing ulcerative colitis, as well as a number of other health problems. Other diseases involved include thyroid disease, testicular cancer, hypercholesterolemia, pregnancy-induced hypertension and kidney cancer. The plaintiff asserts that he was exposed to the chemical in the water from 1985 to 2004 when he resided in Little Hocking, Ohio. There are a number of similar lawsuits pending against DuPont, and they are being sent to a federal district court in Columbus, Ohio, where litigation from various districts is being consolidated.
As part of a settlement reached in 2005 in a class-action lawsuit, DuPont does not dispute that C8 can cause the various diseases it has been linked to. Large companies like DuPont, with their eye always on their bottom line, callously pollute the environment by simply dumping their toxic industrial waste to save a few pennies and avoid paying for proper waste disposal. As a result, numerous innocent people are experiencing agonizing pain and suffering, impaired lives and even early deaths. Big judgment awards are necessary both to provide at least some meager compensation to the victims and to deter companies from treating our drinking water as their toxic chemical waste dump.
Source: West Virginia Record, "Ohio man alleges ulcerative colitis caused by DuPont's Wood Co. plant" John O'Brien, Dec. 04, 2013