Radiation exposure case dismissed

Judge dismisses sailor radiation case

Door open for follow-on lawsuit; attorney says he will refile with more plaintiffs

UT San Diego,

17 December, 2013

A San Diego federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that U.S. sailors were exposed to dangerous radiation during the humanitarian response to the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

But Judge Janis L. Sammartino left the door open for a follow-on lawsuit, and the attorney representing several sailors from the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan said he intends to refile.DOWNLOAD .PDF

The judge dismissed the case Nov. 26 on jurisdictional grounds, saying that it was beyond her authority to determine whether the Japanese government had perpetrated a fraud on its American counterpart.

The defendant in the December 2012 case was Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The lawsuit argued that power company officials lied about the amount of leakage from the damaged plant, in concert with the government of Japan. It says the Navy used those reports in its own calculations about the safety of U.S. sailors in the relief effort, called Operation Tomodachi.

The carrier Reagan responded to the disaster and for more than three weeks stayed off the coast, launching aircraft to help Japanese survivors.

Two days after the disaster, the Navy repositioned the Reagan after detecting low levels of contamination in the air and on 17 aircrew members.

Sailors represented in the lawsuit were deckhands who washed down the flight deck, and performed over decontamination tasks on the ship.

Paul Garner, the Encinitas lawyer leading the case, said the sailors’ ailments include rectal bleeding and other gastrointestinal trouble, unremitting headaches, hair loss and fatigue. Some have thyroid and gallbladder cancer. Many are in their 20s.

Garner said he will refile the case without alleging the conspiracy with the Japanese government.

The number of plaintiffs is now at 51 people. Garner said he intends to add at least 20 more when he refiles.

Radiation experts interviewed by U-T San Diego earlier this year said that acute illness such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea usually comes on quickly — in days or weeks — after massive radiation exposure.

Unless there are fatalities, people recover within a few months. So, with typical radiation sickness, these former Reagan sailors wouldn’t still have symptoms today.

Long-term illnesses, such as cancer, may result from a smaller amount of radiation exposure. But that type of ailment wouldn’t typically come on so soon, less than two years after the incident.