Decades of anger and frustration are turning into cautious optimism for some victims of contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, as about two dozen of more than 3,700 lawsuits seeking compensation for damages appear headed for trial later this year in federal court in North Carolina.
Once settled, these so-called bellwether cases, selected to represent each of the illnesses found to be connected to the contamination, could help determine payments the government should make to more than 400,000 victims who have filed claims saying they or family members were harmed by tainted water at the base from the 1950s to the 1980s.
The litigation is the result of a law passed by Congress in 2022 giving anyone who spent more than 30 days at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987 two years to file damage claims with the Navy. If there was no resolution in six months, victims could file lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
