News Archive

Email A Friend

More News

April 19, 2024
Workers Compensation Bill 2024: One percent of employee’s salary to contribute to workers’ compensation fund in Kenya.

April 15, 2024
Colorado Worker Shows Head Injury Happened as a Consequence of a Knock on the Head at Work

April 4, 2024
Callfornia Division of Workers' Compensation Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee Meeting Scheduled for April 17, 2024

April 3, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Posts Adjustments to Official Medical Fee Schedule (DMEPOS)

Residents exposed to contaminated drinking water can sue water suppliers even if they are regulated by the state of California. The state Supreme Court made that ruling Feb. 4.

The decision clears a lawsuit pathway for 2,500 alleged victims of groundwater pollution in the San Gabriel Valley. Many of the plaintiffs claim their drinking water gave them cancer.

Defendants in the lawsuits say their water always met Public Utilities Commission (PUC) standards and therefore the suits should be dismissed but the high court said “no.” The San Gabriel Valley lawsuits are the first to be aimed at the utilities selling polluted water. In the past, victims have sued just the polluters themselves.

According to the lawyers for the valley residents, the pollution began in the 1960s with industrial solvents and other chemicals seeping into the groundwater. In 1984 the federal government designated the groundwater basin a Superfund cleanup site. When state officials checked the water in 1998 they said the utilities had “substantially complied” with regulations for more than two decades and the water was safe to drink.

Yet people got sick and they say it was the water. Now it will be up to jury members to decide if the utilities actually did meet health standards.

“The water agencies are not going to settle because the last thing we need is to invite more lawsuits,” Mary Hulett, an attorney for the defendants, told the Los Angeles Times. “If we had all these lawsuits, the cost of water would be really seriously affected.”