Authored By: Iris Garrett
If there is one company in some deep water right now, it’s DuPont. The corporate giant is being forced to pay $10.5 million in punitive damages for a case involving malicious poisoning.
According to an article on The Ring of Fire Network, an Ohio U.S. District Court has ordered the money to be paid out to a man whose testicular cancer was allegedly caused by DuPont’s toxic dumping of chemical C8 into the Ohio River. The article’s author, Sydney Robinson says the court had originally ruled a payout of $2 million to the man, but the additional damages will come as a substantial push for DuPont to take action. She says the company has consistently refused to settle complaints or merge them into a mass tort suit, making claimants wait to gather damages while they are sick or dying.
Robinson says this case is the third one against DuPont involving the chemical C8, and so far in all three cases, juries have found the company did so knowing it caused cancer and tried to hide the truth from the public. However, this is the first time a jury described DuPont’s actions as “actual malice”.
Nine more cases against DuPont are scheduled to go before the Ohio U.S. District Court this year. Robinson says with the combined payouts from the first two and now these additional punitive damages, the corporation has payed $19.2 million. With more than 1,000 cases against them, she says DuPont is bound to be paying out a whole lot more.
To read Sydney Robinson’s full article, click here.
Photo Credit: Chris Dorney