CHARLESTON, S.C. (Legal Newsline) - The lawyers who negotiated a $1 billion-plus settlement with DuPont and stand to take $95 million in fees want a federal judge to punish lawyers trying to stand in the way.
Plaintiff lawyers from firms like Motley Rice and Napoli Shkolnik have filed a motion to sanction attorneys representing Metropolitan Water of Southern California in litigation over chemicals known as PFAS that have found their way into water systems across the country.
DuPont has agreed to pay $1.185 to resolve their claims, and South Carolina federal judge Richard Gergel has given final approval of the settlement.
However, class counsel claims Met's lawyers - Jeff Kray of Marten Law, Met general counsel Marcia Scully and deputy GC Jill Teraoka - are now trying to cause problems with the settlement despite already opting out of it.
Met now wants to intervene in the case, possibly to preserve standing to appeal the settlement, which it wants to modified to address concerns. An email from Teraoka on March 9 demanded the changes and threatened intervention if they weren't made.
"Rather than timely file a motion to intervene, Met waited and launched a last-minute Saturday afternoon take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum, unilaterally demanding a response within 18 hours to its proposed changes, without any advanced notice to Class Counsel," the motion for sanctions says.
"This latest example of Met's flouting of the Local Rules, together with its counsel's long-documented antics of bad-faith conduct, should not be countenanced any longer."
Weeks earlier, Met's lawyers wrote Judge Gergel claiming an "improper and coercive communication sent by Class Counsel to a represented person (Met)."
The email was sent to Met's manager of water system operations and encouraged Met to rejoin the class. The letter complains class counsel did not send the email to Met's lawyers.
Met opted out of the class settlement on Nov. 30 but only now moves to intervene, class counsel complains.
"This recent dilatory conduct is emblematic of the bad faith in which Met and its counsel have conducted themselves throughout these proceedings, through repeated practices of misconduct and judicial abuse," the motion for sanctions says.
"Moreover, as their excuse for having waited until the last minute to file an untimely intervention, Met's counsel disingenuously states that their motion to intervene was occasioned by the Court's issuance of the Final Order and Judgment Approving the Settlement Agreement.
"But nothing in the law required them to wait for that order to issue."
PFAS are a group dubbed "forever chemicals" because they persist in groundwater and human tissue for years. They are found in firefighting foam and consumer products.
The federal government is attempting to set a maximum contaminant level for PFAS, even as groups call the move premature. Much of the research regarding their effect on the human body is disputed.
Class members are local water districts that will implement PFAS remediation measures. It is estimated that DuPont is responsible for only 3% to 7% of the total PFAS liabilities.