$55 Million Settlement for Herculaneum Homeowners Poisoned by Doe Run Lead Smelter
Won by Gray Ritter Graham.
Maurice Graham of Gray, Ritter and Graham secured a $55 million class action settlement in Doyle v. Fluor for Herculaneum, Missouri homeowners whose properties were contaminated by lead emissions from the Doe Run smelter.
What happened
For decades, the Doe Run Resources Corporation operated the only remaining primary lead smelter in the United States in Herculaneum, Missouri, a small town on the Mississippi River about 30 miles south of St. Louis. High lead concentrations were first detected in residential soil as early as 1982. Over the years that followed, the company bought out roughly 150 homes closest to the facility, but thousands of other homeowners remained, living alongside a smelter whose airborne emissions settled into yards, gardens, and the soil where children played.
The class action, styled Doyle et al. v. Fluor Corp. et al., was filed in St. Louis Circuit Court on behalf of property owners who owned and occupied homes in the Herculaneum area on or after July 9, 2001. The plaintiffs alleged that lead emissions from the smelter had damaged the value of their properties and severely diminished their quality of life, including limiting children's ability to play outdoors and forcing families to endure repeated cycles of soil excavation and replacement.
Maurice B. Graham of Gray, Ritter and Graham in St. Louis served as lead class counsel, joined by Kevin S. Hannon of The Hannon Law Firm in Denver. Defendants included Doe Run Resources Corp., Fluor Corp., Homestake Lead Company of Missouri, and several related entities and executives. The case was presided over by Judge Lisa VanAmburg.
The parties reached agreement during four days of mediation in late August and early September 2011, with the deal struck in the early morning hours on the fourth day, weeks before the class action was set for trial in October 2011. The written settlement was finalized in February 2012. The $55 million agreement allocated roughly $26.4 million for annoyance and discomfort claims, $13.2 million for property damage, $13.75 million in attorneys' fees, and the remainder for litigation costs, class representative incentives, and a contingency reserve. Doe Run agreed to pay in four equal annual installments.
Judge VanAmburg granted final approval on April 4, 2012, following a March 2012 fairness hearing. Defendants appealed, but the Missouri Supreme Court refused transfer on June 25, 2013, ending the challenge. The Herculaneum smelter itself permanently ceased operations on December 31, 2013, under a separate $65 million federal EPA compliance agreement.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Gray Ritter Graham
All Gray Ritter Graham proven verdicts →A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.
Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as one of four co-lead class counsel in the $1.51 billion nationwide settlement against Syngenta, recovering losses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. corn growers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers whose market access to China was cut off after the company prematurely commercialized an unapproved GMO corn trait.
Tom Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham represented the family of one victim killed when a 3,000-pound pressurized steam vessel exploded at Loy-Lange Box Company in St. Louis's Soulard neighborhood, launching the tank into a neighboring laundry and killing four people total; consolidated wrongful-death, injury, and property suits settled for more than $47 million.
Army Reserve pilot Kenney Jones died on July 31, 1994 when his Chinook helicopter struck unmarked power lines over the Osage River in Missouri. On retrial in St. Louis in 2001, a jury found the Three Rivers Electric Cooperative 100 percent at fault and awarded his widow $10 million for herself, the couple's two daughters and his parents. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed in 2002.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.