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A West Virginia jury has ordered DuPont to pay $196 million in punitive damages in a class-action suit brought by 10 people who said they were sickened by pollution from a zinc smelter the company operated for 22 years and sold in 1950. DuPont says it will appeal the decision.
The suit accused DuPont of exposing residents living near the site of the former smelter in Spelter, W.Va., to lead, cadmium, and arsenic. Earlier phases of the trial found DuPont liable for creating the waste, required the company to provide medical monitoring of the plaintiffs over the next 40 years, and assessed the firm $56 million to clean up private properties.
DuPont and other chemical firms are no strangers to lawsuits raising corporate accountability issues from the past. In 2002, for example, DuPont faced a lawsuit from Pompton Lake, N.J., residents claiming that lead, mercury, and chlorinated solvents from a former company munitions plant sullied the land and polluted the drinking water. More recently, firms including NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams were hit with lawsuits that seek to put them on the hook for cleaning up homes contaminated by lead-based paint.
In the Spelter case, Stacey J. Mobley, DuPont's general counsel, points out that DuPont reacquired the property in 2001 and completed a cleanup under government supervision in 2006. He asserts that the jury decision unfairly punishes DuPont for "doing the right thing." Mobley adds, "This outcome could have a chilling effect on brownfield remediation" across the U.S.
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