April 17, 2001
Uranium plant workers can't sue their employer, judge says
But ruling allows claims against other companies
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2001/04/17/ke041701s13097.htm
By James Malone, The Courier-Journal

PADUCAH, Ky. -- A federal judge has ruled that Kentucky's workers' compensation law bars uranium plant workers from suing their own employer under a $10 billion lawsuit against two former plant operators.

But U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley, in a 38-page ruling on the suit, denied motions to dismiss it, clearing the way for some present and former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers and their families to proceed against companies other than their employer that were involved in the plant's nuclear fuel work.

''It is a big step,'' William McMurry, a Louisville lawyer who helped file the class-action case in 1999, said yesterday. ''We're delighted.''

Workers have brought claims against the Paducah plant's two former operators, Union Carbide and Martin Marietta -- later Lockheed Martin -- and against a number of outside contractors, including General Electric and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., that shipped material to the Paducah plant.

The lawsuit alleged that workers were unknowingly exposed to radiation and ''assaulted'' by radioactive material brought to the plant as part of an ill-fated program to revitalize spent fuel taken from nuclear weapons reactors.

Under McKinley's ruling earlier this month, employees of Lockheed Martin, which operated the Paducah plant from 1984 to 1999, can pursue claims against Union Carbide, which operated the plant from 1952 to 1984, for dangerous or hazardous substances that were Union Carbide's responsibility. The plant now is operated by U.S. Enrichment Corp.

But the ruling appears to close the door on the claims of workers who were employed by both companies, or those who worked for Union Carbide and left before Lockheed Martin took over. However, McMurry said they may still have claims against outside firms that manufactured, processed or shipped reprocessed radioactive fuel to Paducah.

Lockheed Martin spokesman Hugh Burns said he had not seen the ruling and did not have a comment on it. A Union Carbide spokesman could not be reached.

Government reports have acknowledged the spent fuel sent to Paducah contained highly radioactive traces of plutonium and neptunium that escaped or leaked into the environment during the process to clean and replenish the fuel.

The plutonium and neptunium collected in workplace dust and debris and possibly was tracked home on workers' clothing, exposing family members.

Plant contractors knew about the dangers and concealed it from workers, the suit alleged. But McKinley ruled that absent evidence such concealment was deliberate, the workers' argument was insufficient to allow their claims to proceed.

McMurry said it's unclear how many workers might be affected by the ruling, but he conceded the number of claims would be reduced.

In another part of his ruling, McKinley overruled defense arguments that a one-year statute of limitations barred claims. The defendants said they told workers about the radiation dangers in the early 1990s, but the workers disputed that.

McKinley said the primary issue in the case ''is the extent of the parties' respective knowledge of the exposure -- and those facts are very much in dispute here.''