Flint residents reach $25M settlement with engineering firm in water crisis lawsuit
A group of Flint residents, businesses and property owners have reached a settlement agreement worth $25 million with an engineering firm that consulted city officials after the 2014 Flint water crisis, according to a Thursday court filing.
Veolia North America, a Boston-based engineering firm, reached a $25 million settlement with a group of class action claimants in Flint. The class action was originally launched in 2016, after plaintiffs said Veolia and another engineering firm that worked in Flint after the onset of the water crisis, Lockwood, Andrews and Newnam (LAN), failed to identify corroding pipes and acted too slowly to address the water contamination. The exact details of the settlement have not been made available yet.
The settlement agreement also includes payment of $1,500 for each minor claimant represented in the lawsuit, up to $1.5 million, according to attorneys.
"The Plaintiffs participating in this agreement have reached a settlement in principle of all claims against (Veolia), including those covered in the Consolidated Class Action case ... as well as all claims by the certain Individual Claimants participating in the settlement," a Thursday court filing announcing the settlement agreement reads.
The settlement agreement means plaintiffs and Veolia will avoid a trial, previously scheduled to start Feb. 13. Separately, plaintiffs and LAN reached a settlement agreement last year.
The settlement is in addition to a $626.25 million settlement reached between Flint residents and the state of Michigan, and others, in 2021. Ted Leopold, one of the plaintiffs' court-appointed attorneys and co-lead trial counsel and partner at law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll, said payments from that settlement still haven't been issued, citing procedural issues.
"The administrators are trying to expedite it as quickly as they can," Leopold said Thursday. "We hope that this particular (payment) will move as expeditiously as possible."
Leopold hopes the settlement agreement can bring at least a bit of relief to the Flint residents affected by the drinking water crisis.
"It was such a horrific episode," he said. "Certainly, there's some community history and decisions that were made by the state of Michigan and others that I think run very deep and personal. I like to say that litigation and closure can bring peace of mind and justice, hopefully we've got some semblance of that here. But there's a long history there."
To date, there have been class action settlements between residents and the state, the city of Flint, McLaren Hospitals, and Rowe Professional Services Co., an engineering firm. Residents are also suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its role in the city's water crisis, according to the Associated Press.
In a news release, Veolia said it stands by its work in Flint and "welcomes this opportunity to put the class litigation behind it." The company said it was hired by Flint officials as a consultant 10 months after the city switched its main water source to the Flint River, and conducted a one-week assessment.
"VNA made good recommendations, including a crucial one on corrosion control, that would have helped the City had those recommendations not been almost entirely ignored by the responsible government officials," company officials wrote in a news release. "VNA had no power over these decisions. VNA never operated the Flint Water Plant."
U.S. District Judge Judith Levy still has to approve the settlement agreement between plaintiffs and Veolia, Leopold said.
A mistrial was declared after a jury failed to reach a verdict in a separate lawsuit against Veolia and LAN in August 2022. In that trial, four children had sued the engineering firms, seeking millions in damages after plaintiffs' attorneys claimed the lead contamination in Flint’s drinking water resulted in developmental and social issues for the group.
The Flint water crisis started in 2014 when the city switched water sources and lead, a neurotoxin particularly dangerous to children, leached into the city's water supply. As the city struggled with water quality, it also saw an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease and deaths.
'It's just devastating': Flint reels as water crisis prosecution comes to an end
Criminal investigations into the water crisis have ended after the Michigan Supreme Court ruled prosecutors erred in having a judge serve as a "one-man grand jury" to indict former Flint and state officials, including former Gov. Rick Snyder.
The state's high court declined to hear an appeal launched by the state in Snyder's case last October, signaling an end to the state's criminal prosecution efforts.
Contact Arpan Lobo: alobo@freepress.com. Follow him on X (Twitter) @arpanlobo.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: $25M settlement reached in Flint Water Crisis lawsuit against Veolia
