National Guard case dismissed

INDIANAPOLIS — A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that a defense contractor concealed the risks of a cancer-causing chemical that nearly 140 Indiana National Guard soldiers may have been exposed to while serving in Iraq.

Chief Judge Richard L. Young ruled that his court lacks “personal jurisdiction” over Texas-based KBR and several related companies named in the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that KBR failed to warn the soldiers that a water-pumping plant site near Basra, which they helped guard in 2003, was covered in an industrial chemical containing a substance known to heighten the risk for cancer of the lungs and respiratory tract.

The suit says the site was covered in sodium dichromate, an industrial chemical normally used to remove pipe corrosion. It contained heavy doses of a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium that is known to heighten the risk for cancer of the lungs and respiratory tract.

Some of those soldiers now suffer from rashes and other health woes.
KBR has denied wrongdoing.

Young dismissed the lawsuit in part because the actions at issue in the suit took place outside Indiana, though the health effects are only being felt now. He also said the KBR companies’ limited contacts in Indiana, where they have no offices but have held contracts, amount to an insufficient business footprint.

Mike Doyle, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said the legal team plans to file a new version of the lawsuit in another jurisdiction as soon as possible. He did not specify where.
“This development delays but does not deny justice for the Indiana Guardsmen in this case,” Doyle said in a statement. “The truth of what happened at Qarmat Ali will be told, and we believe it will be told in a federal court.”

Most of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in December 2008, served with a Tell City unit deployed with the Indiana National Guard’s Jasper-based 1st Battalion, 152nd Infantry Regiment.

Among the plaintiffs is the family of David Moore, 42, of Dubois, Ind., who died of lung disease in 2008.

Last November, Lt. Col. James C. Gentry, 52, of Williams, Ind. — a nonsmoker — died of lung cancer. The month before, he testified during a deposition at his southern Indiana home that he believed the exposure in Iraq caused his cancer.