SPOKANE — The lead lawyer for government contractors in the long-running Hanford downwinders lawsuit says his companies are ready to offer cash settlements to a few of the hundreds of people who believe their illnesses were caused by radiation releases.
U.S. District Judge William Nielsen hosted more than a dozen attorneys Tuesday in Spokane for a status conference on the 18-year-old lawsuit. The judge told the lawyers the case has been “caught on dead center for too long.”
Roughly 2,000 people say they’ve suffered from the radiation. They lived in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and Idaho, down wind of the Hanford nuclear reservation, as the U.S. government was developing the first atomic bombs in the 1940s. They’ve been trying to win compensation for thyroid cancer and other conditions that they say were caused by the exposure.
Lawyer Kevin Van Wart represents Hanford contractors E.I. DuPont De Nemours &Co. and General Electric Co. He says his clients are willing to pay to settle some claims of people exposed to the most radiation.
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