Information About 2,500 Camp Lejeune Injury Claims May Influence Settlement Process

Judge seeks settlement framework for Camp Lejeune injury lawsuits and administrative claims by the end of the year.

A federal judge has ordered lawyers to conduct a survey of 2,500 randomly selected Camp Lejeune injury lawsuits to help both plaintiffs and the U.S. government assess the scope of the litigation and promote settlement discussions that may resolve hundreds of thousands of claims brought over contaminated water at the U.S. Marine Corps training base in North Carolina.

The U.S. government faces nearly half a million administrative claims and lawsuits involving dozens of different injuries, all believed to be caused by exposure to toxic chemicals in water at Camp Lejeune between the mid-1950s and late 1980s.

The complaints were filed during a two-year window from August 2022 until August 2024 provided by the Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA), which sought to provide financial compensation for individuals diagnosed with various types of cancer and other ailments after living, serving or working at the base. 

However, despite an elective settlement option for Camp Lejeune lawsuits announced in September 2023, very few claims have been resolved.

The litigation is being overseen by four different U.S. District Judges in the Eastern District of North Carolina, including Richard E. Myers II, Terrence W. Boyle, Louise W. Flanagan and James C. Dever III. To help gauge how the court may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be presented throughout thousands of claims, the four judges are preparing groups of claims involving different categories of injuries for early trial dates.

However, according to a court order (PDF) issued on October 23, the judges hope those trials will not be necessary. They have announced that the court will select 2,500 random Camp Lejeune injury lawsuits whose attorneys and plaintiffs will be given questionnaires about various aspects of their claims.

Those completed questionnaires will be designed to give the parties and a Special Settlement Master an overview of the entire litigation and what a representative case looks like. The judges indicated they hope this information will help the parties reach a Camp Lejeune injury settlement agreement soon, seeking “expeditious pursuit of a substantial portion of the claims by year’s end.”

The court calls on every firm representing five or more claimants to provide status reports on the progress of the questionnaires and collection of supporting records throughout November, with all questionnaires and supporting records to be completed by November 24.

Camp Lejeune Injury Bellwether Lawsuits

If no settlement is reached in a timely fashion, the bellwether trial selection process will continue to proceed. The Court established a Camp Lejeune bellwether lawsuit Track 1 criteria in October 2023, in which the parties selected a group of 100 cases to go through early discovery involving the following five categories of injuries:

• Bladder cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Leukemia
• Parkinson’s disease
• Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

The Court then directed the parties to narrow the list to 25 claims that will be eligible for trial, including five cases from each of the five injury categories, with plaintiffs selecting three of the claims and the U.S. government selecting the other two.

While the outcome of these early bellwether trials will not be binding on other claims in the litigation, they will be closely watched by lawyers involved in the cases, as the average amounts of any Camp Lejeune lawsuit payouts awarded may help the parties in global settlement negotiations for various types of injuries.