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Monday, January 23, 2006
No new trial for Hanford downwinder
SPOKANE -- A U.S. District Court judge Friday denied a motion for a new trial for an Idaho woman who claims Cold War emissions from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation caused her cancer.
A federal jury in November denied claims by Shannon Rhodes of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, that Hanford releases caused her thyroid cancer. The verdict followed a mistrial in May, when jurors deadlocked over whether her health problems were caused by the releases.
Rhodes' attorneys filed a motion for a new trial last month, alleging jury misconduct. They argued that during deliberations last fall, two jurors brought up evidence not introduced during the trial -- namely, that the trial was Rhodes' second and that she had lost the first.
U.S. District Judge William Nielsen denied the motion Friday.
References to the first trial, though stricken in part, were made to the jury during the second trial, and the information was not an extraneous influence on the jury process, Nielsen wrote.
Richard Eymann, Rhodes' lawyer, said he was disappointed with the ruling and would appeal.
Rhodes was one of six so-called "bellwether" plaintiffs, who were considered representative of thousands of people who contend their health was damaged by releases from the south-central Washington Hanford site.
The plaintiffs are known as Hanford "downwinders" because many lived in areas downwind from radioactive and chemical releases from the nuclear site. Downwinders didn't learn about the radiation releases until the government declassified the information in 1986.
Since 1990, lawsuits have been filed against the private companies -- General Electric Co., E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co. and UNC Nuclear Inc. -- that ran Hanford's plutonium factories during World War II and the early days of the Cold War.
In February, two of the bellwether plaintiffs were awarded a combined total of about $500,000 after the jury decided their thyroid cancers were "more likely than not" caused by Hanford radiation.
Jurors rejected the claims of three others with autoimmune thyroid disease, saying their illnesses likely were not caused by Hanford's emissions of radioactive iodine-131, a byproduct of plutonium production.
Those rulings remain under appeal.
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