Lockheed Targeted for Second Class-Action Suit

BURBANK —  Residents suing Lockheed Martin Corp. for property damages allegedly caused by years of pollution will file a second class-action suit seeking to make the aerospace giant fund a medical monitoring program and pay for any illnesses stemming from environmental contamination.

The second suit on behalf of thousands of neighbors of Lockheed’s former aircraft production complex will be filed sometime this week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, said attorney Patrick J. Grannan at a weekend meeting of concerned residents.

The two lawsuits are separate from a $60-million settlement Lockheed reached last month with a different group of neighbors. That agreement provides up to $300,000 to individual claimants. The pending class-action alleging property damage was filed in August on behalf of thousands of residents of Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood and Sun Valley who were left out of the settlement.

“We initially filed a lawsuit for property damage, but we wanted to make sure we consulted with the proper doctors before the second lawsuit for personal injury,” Grannan said, speaking Saturday at a meeting attended by about 200 people at the Burbank Hilton at which he and several other attorneys answered questions about the case.

The Environmental Protection Agency has determined that an underground water “plume” stretching roughly from Sun Valley to western Glendale is contaminated with several substances harmful to humans--including trichloroethylene and chromium, both thought to cause cancer. The contaminants are believed to have been dumped there by Lockheed and other industrial businesses.

The city of Burbank from the mid- to late 1980s was forced to shut down municipal drinking water wells after discovery of trace amounts of chemical contamination. It’s not certain how long the contaminated water was served to city residents.

Grannan said the new lawsuit will seek to require Lockheed Martin to pay for a medical monitoring program, in which the health status of residents would be tracked over time to pinpoint possible problems caused by environmental contamination. The lawsuit also would seek damages for those suffering proven damage to health from the pollution.

He said the attorneys have assembled a team of physicians and researchers from UCLA, Caltech and other institutions to conduct research and help determine whether a connection exists between the chemicals and any cancers or other problems suffered by the neighbors.

Lockheed has maintained that its Burbank plant, no longer in operation, posed no health risks.

But several residents at Saturday’s meeting spoke emotionally of cancer and other illnesses they believe may be tied to toxic contamination.

“Six months after I moved into a house across the street from the [Lockheed] site, I was hospitalized for an unknown neurological disorder,” said Sally Swofford, 30.

Since her hospitalization in 1987, Swofford said she has suffered periodic blind spells and reduced hand-eye coordination and other problems. “The symptoms have never left me,” she said.

Cheryl O’Dwyer, whose Sun Valley home is one block away from the site, said she wonders whether her bout with breast cancer is related to living so close to toxic chemicals for the past 22 years.

“How do I know whether there is a connection,” O’Dwyer said. “More than anything, though, I feel betrayed. [Lockheed] should have told everyone in the area what was going on so we could protect ourselves.”

Other residents complained that the area’s reputation for water and soil pollution has made it hard to sell their property or find rental tenants.

“The real estate company can’t even show my property to prospective buyers unless they disclose the contamination,” said Burbank resident Rhonda Rodriguez, 37, adding that she has been trying to sell her home for more than a year.

Grannan said the lawsuit on property damages, which seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages from Lockheed, is still awaiting a judge’s ruling certifying the neighbors as a class. If the class is not certified, residents could proceed with individual claims.

Grannan said he hopes that the companion suit will also be certified and the two matters will be combined as a single lawsuit.

The class-action suit followed the disclosure in August that Lockheed Martin, with the help of mediators, had reached an out-of-court settlement with about 1,300 residents--whose names have remained confidential as part of the deal. A community uproar followed, with many residents complaining of being unfairly left out of the deal.

Grannan said he is still actively seeking residents to join the class-action suit, and he believes that up to 600,000 area residents may have been affected by Lockheed pollution and qualify to participate in the case.