PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID BOISE, ID PERMIT 411
720 Goodlette Rd. N, Suite 304 Naples, FL 34102 www.AttorneyShapiro.com
Inside How Do You Eat an Elephant? Page 1 Eco-Friendly and Kid-Friendly Activities for Earth Day Calculating the Cost of a Wrongful Death Page 2 What Are Our Clients Saying? Sesame Zucchini Noodles Page 3 The Lawyer Who Took on a Multibillion- Dollar Company Page 4
Something in the Water Why Rob Bilott Took on DuPont
that went far beyond the boundaries of Tennant’s farm and into the drinking water of every American.
Rob Bilott never should have agreed to representWilbur Tennant’s case.
The cattle farmer had presented evidence of the strange malady plaguing his cattle to lawyers, politicians, and veterinarians in Parkersburg, West Virginia, but no one took Tennant’s case seriously.
The letter mentioned a mysterious chemical called PFOA, and Bilott requested documentation fromDuPont to find out more about it. However, the company refused, so Bilott requested a court order. Soon, dozens of disorganized boxes filled with thousands of 50-year-old files arrived at Bilott’s firm. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to find anything incriminating or even conclusive in the mess of documents, but soon, his time as an environmental lawyer helped him see the bigger picture. It became clear that DuPont had orchestrated a massive cover-up regarding their use of PFOA. PFOA is used in the manufacturing of Teflon, and the company had knowingly exposed workers and the Parkersburg water supply to it. Bilott filed a class-action suit as a medical monitoring claimon behalf of the people of Parkersburg, and, as of 2011, a probable link between PFOA and six health conditions, including two types of cancer, has been found. Because of the medical monitoring claim, plaintiffs can file personal injury lawsuits against DuPont. So far, 3,535 people have. If it weren’t for Bilott andTennant, the public might have never known the dangers of PFOA.
But when Bilott saw the evidence for himself, it was clear that something was wrong.
The videos and photographs Tennant had collected showed cattle with patchy fur, growths and lesions, white slime coming from their mouths, and staggering gaits. Tennant told Bilott that the abnormal behavior and physical deformities had started after his brother Jim sold his property to DuPont, a chemical company with a big presence in Parkersburg. Jim’s property bordered on Wilbur’s, and a stream running from Jim’s property provided water for all the cattle and wildlife in the area. Since the sale, the streamhad become frothy and discolored, and the animals that drank from it were sick, malformed, or dead, including 153 of Tennant’s 200 cows.
When Bilott stumbled upon a letter fromDuPont to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the real horror story began to emerge—one
4 • www.AttorneyShapiro.com
Made with FlippingBook Publishing Software