Lawsuit Filed over North Carolina Water Contamination
The national law firm of Baron & Budd has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Brunswick County in the United States Eastern District of North Carolina against Chemours and DuPont for their role in contaminating the Cape Fear River. The firm is pursuing legal action on the county’s behalf to recover costs required to investigate, manage, reduce and remove chemicals from drinking water drawn from the Cape Fear River.
Through initial investigations, Brunswick County has obtained evidence that Chemours and DuPont not only manufactured dangerous perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) at the Fayetteville Works plant in Fayetteville, North Carolina since 1980, but also released PFC chemicals into the Cape Fear River over the span of many years without disclosure. The companies have continued to deposit PFCs into the river as recently as September 2017.
The legal team representing Brunswick County will be led by Baron & Budd’s Scott Summy, who has a lengthy track record of protecting the drinking water of North Carolina residents. In the 1990s, he filed the first MTBE lawsuit against Conoco on behalf of Wilmington residents, which was settled in 1997 after a Wilmington-based jury rendered a multi-million-dollar verdict to cover the costs of medical monitoring. Harold Seagle of North Carolina-based Seagle Law will serve as co-counsel in the case.
“To think that DuPont and Chemours released their waste products directly into the Cape Fear River, which it knew was public drinking water for thousands of people, is unimaginable,” said Summy. “The unfortunate challenge now facing Brunswick County is contaminated drinking water caused by the non-disclosed deposit of PFCs into the Cape Fear River. The County is dedicated to ensuring its residents’ safety and quality of life are protected, which is why it has filed a lawsuit to resolve this situation.”
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