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By Julie Sullivan, The Oregonian
Originally Published Oregonlive.com on May 19, 2010, 9:17PM

Photo by: Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian - David Sugerman represents 21 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers in their lawsuit against KBR.

Oregon Army National Guard veterans suing the largest war contractor in Iraq today in federal court in Portland acknowledge they’re waging an improbable fight.

In February, the war contractor squashed a similar lawsuit by Indiana Guard who also claimed they were knowingly exposed to a cancer-causing chemical in Iraq in 2003.

Last June, the war contractor even knocked out a suit by 10 of its former employees — the people Oregon troops were guarding.

The 21 Oregon veterans suing Kellogg, Brown and Root include a postal clerk, a security guard and a soldier just back from a second tour to Iraq where he guarded KBR convoys. The men say they suffer breathing, stomach and other health problems from being exposed to hexavalent chromium at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant.

They face a large and experienced defense team who’ve handled hundreds of personal injury claims filed against KBR since the invasion of Iraq over its burn pits, accidental electrocutions and alleged assaults.

Photo by Beth Nakamura, The Oregonian - Rocky Bixby is one of the veterans in the KBR lawsuit.

On the vets’ team: one tall Texan and a Portland trial lawyer in a solo firm.

Houston attorney Michael Patrick Doyle, who’s won millions suing corporations for negligence, is working with David Sugerman, who’s taken class-action suits and consumer cases. They took the case on contingency. After months of unpaid work, one soldier felt so guilty he gave Sugerman the only bill in his wallet: an Iraqi dinar.

Today, KBR’s attorneys will argue it’s not responsibile. They blame the Army Corps of Engineers, which was in charge at Qarmat Ali. KBR’s local attorneys Jeffrey Eden and Stephen Deatherage will ask Magistrate Judge Paul Papak to stop discovery. They want Papak to rule — yet again– on whether the case should go forward in his U.S. District courtroom.

The case pits the Oregon veterans against the very Army they served in. For instance, the Army won’t release some records to their attorneys — only KBR.

“It’s overwhelming to know we’re going up against a company that has a lot of power and that the military seems to want to keep on their side, to work with in the future,” said former soldier Rocky Bixby, 43, a public safety officer at Oregon Health & Science University.

“It’s like stepping onto a freeway. You don’t know if you’re going to get run over or even make it out of there.”

The Oregon case against KBR offers a portal into the unprecedented privatization of war.

Since 2001, the government has paid private companies at least $150 billion to do work the military once did, from folding laundry to driving fuel trucks. Civilians working for contractors now outnumber military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last month, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reported just how radical the shift is. During World War II, the ratio of contractors to military was 1-to-7. In Vietnam, 1-to-6. In Iraq and Afghanistan, 1-to-1 or fewer.

Court documents, government reports, Congressional testimony and reporting by the Center for Public Integrity and U.S. newspapers describe KBR’s ascent:

Three weeks before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Corps of Engineers contracted with KBR to fight Iraqi oil fires, without the usual bidding process or notification to Congress.

KBR was well connected.

Ties to Lyndon Johnson had helped the vintage Texas road-building firm, Brown and Root erect dams, military installations and off-shore oil platforms before it was acquired by oil giant Halliburton in 1962.

After the Persian Gulf war, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney ordered a study to turn military support operations such feeding and housing troops to a private company. Brown and Root did the study, and was then chosen to carry out its plan for $2 billion. Cheney went on to Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he became vice president.

KBR lost the bid for the logistics contract in 1997 but won it back in late 2001, a 10-year contract worth $23 billion. In November 2002, KBR was asked to plan how to restore oil production in Iraq. Five months later, it won the no-bid contract to carry out its own plan. Three weeks later, the U.S. invaded Iraq.

But details of the contract remained secret until the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity sued the government and a year later, got the paperwork. They found 10 tasks had been added onto KBR’s original oil restoration contract. One task had ballooned in cost from $24 million to nearly $900 million in just six months. KBR eventually billed the government 2.5 billion.

Within weeks of the invasion, contractors reached the decrepit Qarmat Ali plant near Basra in southern Iraq. The plant provided the critical water pressure needed to extract oil from nearby fields. KBR moved swiftly to repair it.

National Guard soldiers from four states were ordered to protect the contractors traveling to Iraq oil sites. From April to June 2003, teams of Oregon soldiers accompanied KBR employees to pipelines, oil fields and Qarmat Ali. Just weeks after the Indiana Guard replaced the Oregonians, a new KBR safety officer arrived at the plant and was immedately concerned about the fine orange powder piled several feet deep that blew constantly in the desert wind. The corrosion fighter contained hexavalent chromium, one of the most potent carcinogens. Most of the soldiers and staff had sinus problems and bloody noses. KBR managers at first dismissed complaints, then inspected the plant wearing protective suits. The military immediately pulled out. KBR closed the plant, and the contamination was eventually paved over.

Still, the exposure and the men’s health problems remained hidden until KBR’s own employees told Senate Democrats about the hexavalent chromium during contractor oversight hearings on waste and abuse in 2008. The Senators concluded “the Bush Administration failed to follow long-established regulations for awarding contracts, mismanaged the performance of contracts it did award, and allowed contractors and Iraqi government officials to engage in fraudulent and wasteful conduct.”

Soldiers from across the country, learning the extent of the danger, also testified before Congress and began filing suit.

The Senate Democrats also concluded that KBR “knowingly” exposed troops and its own employees to sodium dichromate/hexavalent chromium.”

KBR, which spun off from Halliburton in 2007, become synonymous for poor performance: serving spoiled food, using contaminated water and burning trash in pits. The company also outraged the public by hiring workers through two shell companies in the Cayman Islands to avoid federal Social Security and Medicare taxes.

KBR denies harming troops or employees in Iraq and said it is proud of its work there.

“Ethics and integrity are the foundation of our business. The company in no way tolerates or condones illegal or unethical behavior. When questions about our work have been raised, KBR has provided information requested of us and worked to resolve the issues. We remain committed to providing the Army with high-quality, cost effective service,” spokeswoman Heather Browne said in a statement Wednesday.

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]]> http://kbrlitigation.com/suit-against-kbr-by-oregon-national-guard-goes-forward-in-portland/feed/ 0 http://kbrlitigation.com/houston-chronicle-guardsmen-allege-kbr-exposed-them-to-carcinogens-in-iraq/ http://kbrlitigation.com/houston-chronicle-guardsmen-allege-kbr-exposed-them-to-carcinogens-in-iraq/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:59:51 +0000 Doyle Raizner llp http://www.kbrlitigation.com/?p=484 By MARY FLOOD | Houston Chronicle More than 50 Indiana National Guardsmen have filed a lawsuit in Houston claiming KBR failed to warn them about exposure to carcinogenic chemicals at an Iraqi water facility they were guarding. An Indiana judge tossed out the same lawsuit over cancer-causing hexavalent chromium at the Basra-area water plant, saying [...]


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Houston Chronicle Website

By MARY FLOOD | Houston Chronicle

More than 50 Indiana National Guardsmen have filed a lawsuit in Houston claiming KBR failed to warn them about exposure to carcinogenic chemicals at an Iraqi water facility they were guarding.

An Indiana judge tossed out the same lawsuit over cancer-causing hexavalent chromium at the Basra-area water plant, saying that Midwestern court did not have jurisdiction over the Houston-based company.

Houston lawyer Mike Doyle, who has also filed cases in Oregon and West Virginia for other soldiers claiming exposure to the chemicals,said “KBR management absolutely knew that soldiers were being exposed and management absolutely did not share the information so they could protect themselves.”

KBR has denied that they kept any contamination secret and said there is no known illness connected to the facility.

The lawsuit filed last week alleges the guardsmen from Tell City, Ind., and others working at the site were subjected to “months and months of unprotected, unknowing, direct exposure to one of the most potent carcinogens and mutagenic substances known to man.”

“The Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen were repeatedly told that there was no danger on site, even after KBR managers knew that blood testing of American civilians exposed on site confirmed elevated chromium levels,” the suit alleges.

KBR was hired to get the Iraqi water plant working through a no-bid U.S. government contract in 2003 as part of Operation Restore Iraqi Oil.

The dangerous hexavalent chromium was part of a chemical compound called sodium dichromate used by Iraqis as an anti-corrosive for clearing pipes. The soldiers who are suing, along with some family members, were guarding the facility while KBR civilians worked on restoring it.

Congress held hearings on the question of the chemical exposure at this Iraqi plant in June 2008.

Doyle said one soldier’s death has been directly linked to exposure to the orange dust with the carcinogen and others are sick with related respiratory illnesses, many have related rashes or other problems and all have higher risks of getting cancer.

Mark Lowes, KBR’s vice president of litigation, said any contamination KBR found at the site was properly reported.

“Based on testing by both the military and KBR we believe there was no hazardous exposure, and there has been no documented illness related to the facility. More importantly, our Statement of Work with the Army obligated them to provide us with a facility that was free from ‘all environmental and war hazards,’ ” Lowes said.

Lowes said some KBR employees also went into arbitration over possible chemical exposure at the Qarmat Ali water facility and that “resulted in a finding of no illness and no liability to the employees.”

For full article at the Houston Chronicle

KBR: Private Military Cancer (PMC) Provider?

David Isenberg, Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq

Yesterday Doyle Raizner LLP, the legal team for the Indiana National Guardsmen, whose claims against KBR were recently dismissed in Indiana federal court, refiled for the Guardsmen in Houston federal court.

The suit alleges that KBR knowingly allowed exposure to the toxic chemical sodium dichromate. This chemical, sometimes called hexavalent chromium, was widely present as an orange-colored dust that soldiers assigned to guard the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant in southern Iraq could not avoid inhaling. Sodium dichromate or hexavalent chromium is a powerful carcinogen known to cause lung, nasal and other cancers, other severe respiratory problems and other medical problems.

Here are some excerpts from the 32-page lawsuit…

FACTUAL OVERVIEW OF THE CASE

1.1 KBR, a private company, and its operating subsidiaries (including Cayman Island subsidiaries set up by KBR for various purposes described further below), received billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts for work in Iraq in 2003. This lawsuit arises from one of the projects KBR was charged with safely completing — a project involving the restoration of the Qarmat Ali water plant in southern Iraq so the facility could resume pumping water into the Iraqi oil wells for more consistent oil flow. After major combat operations ceased in southern Iraq, KBR, a self-proclaimed expert in overseas infrastructure projects, was paid by the United States government to get the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant back online. The project necessarily required KBR to take ordinary and necessary safety precautions to protect those working at the site, including proper surveys of the site before and as work progressed. KBR was incentivized to get Qarmat Ali back online as quickly as possible without interruptions because it received not only base contract payments but also retrospective “award” payments for expeditious completion of the project.

1.2 Instead of doing what KBR promised and was paid to do for the Qarmat Ali project, KBR managers based in Kuwait City; Houston, Texas; Alexandria, Virginia; and elsewhere disregarded and downplayed the extreme danger of wholesale site contamination by sodium dichromate, a toxic chemical used at the site as an anti-corrosive and containing nearly pure hexavalent chromium. KBR managers knew about both the site contamination and the extreme danger of hexavalent chromium.

What these knowing acts and omissions meant to the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen providing security for the actual work at Qarmat Ali, along with the British troops and the American civilians actually carrying on the work at Qarmat Ali, was months and months of unprotected, unknowing, direct exposure to one of the most potent carcinogens and mutagenic substances known to man: hexavalent chromium. When the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen and American civilians actually working at Qarmat Ali began experiencing the most characteristic symptom of acute hexavalent chromium poisoning, nasal excoriation (bleeding from the nose) known to toxicologists as “chrome nose,” KBR managers told men onsite that their symptoms were simply an effect of the “dry desert air” and they must be “allergic to sand.” The Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen were repeatedly told that there was no danger on site, even after KBR managers knew that blood testing of American civilians exposed onsite confirmed elevated chromium levels. What was not revealed until Congressional Hearings in June 2008 was the extent of knowledge of KBR managers about the danger onsite and the ongoing concealment of the exposures to the Tell City Guardsmen and others.

On the classic question of what did they know and when did they know it:

There is no doubt that KBR’s managers knew before the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen ever arrived at Qarmat Ali about the dangerous sodium dichromate contamination at the site. According to the sworn statement of KBR’s southern Iraq Health Safety Environment (HSE) manager Johnny Morney:

Q. How did you learn Sodium –

A. Jake Duhan was making a round as a safety professional. He made a round and he observed this.

Q. Mr. Duhan –

A. Right.

Q. — this observation that was conveyed to you -

A. Right.

Q. — in May 2003 –

A. Right.

Q. — how was it conveyed to you in May 2003? In what manner? Did

you get a memo, did you get a email?

A. In a conversation. He came in and it was in his daily report and we had a discussion, which was a requirement of all our HSE coordinators…

THIRD CAUSE OF ACTION – FRAUD

7.1 The Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen re-allege and incorporate each allegation contained in Paragraphs 1 to 6.2 of this Complaint as if fully set forth herein.

7.2 KBR was in contact with the United States Army regarding the dangers present at Qarmat Ali and materially misrepresented those dangers to the United States Army by denying any knowledge of site contamination until July 2003, failing to inform the United States Army of the dangers at Qarmat Ali while the Army was of the understanding that such dangers would be conveyed, and otherwise concealing evidence of sodium dichromate exposure even though KBR managers were aware of the sodium dichromate contamination in May 2003 and the dangers associated therewith.

7.3 The Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen were exposed to sodium dichromate despite the afore-referenced representations from KBR officials that falsely conveyed the impression and explicit understanding that Qarmat Ali was safe.

7.4 KBR had reason to expect and was substantially certain that its representations would be directly and indirectly communicated to the Tell City Guardsmen and that these misrepresentations would substantially increase the danger to the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen by allaying any fears that they or the United States Army might have had about their exposure to such a potent carcinogen.

7.5 Had KBR not made these misrepresentations, actions would have been undertaken to protect the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen from the sodium dichromate contamination and/or to otherwise remove this threat to the Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen.

7.6 The Tell City, Indiana Guardsmen suffered significant physical pain and mental anguish as a result of KBR’s above-discussed conduct and misrepresentations.

Full Story from Huffingtonpost.com

INDIANAPOLIS — After their lawsuit was dismissed in Indiana, attorneys for a group of National Guard soldiers have refiled it in Texas.

The lawsuit against a defense contractor claims the company knew of the presence of a deadly toxin at a site the soldiers were guarding in Iraq but waited before telling anyone.

The lawsuit against KBR was filed Tuesday in a federal court in Houston.

Brought by a group of attorneys led by Houston-based Mike Doyle, the lawsuit was dismissed in February by a federal judge in Indiana. The judge ruled the court lacks “personal jurisdiction” to take up the matter and did not consider the merits of the lawsuit.

The soldiers, about 140 from Indiana, say they were exposed to sodium dichromate, an anti-corrosive that was likely dusted across the wind-swept desert near Basra when Iraqis cut open storage containers as they fled the site at the beginning of the 2003 American-led invasion.

Known carcinogen

The soldiers were guarding Qar-mat Ali, a plant being operated by Houston-based KBR where water was pumped underground to boost oil production.

Sodium dichromate contains hexavalent chromium, a known human carcinogen. Exposure to the toxin, experts say, can cause nosebleeds and severe respiratory problems, as well as heightened risks of cancer, and kidney and liver diseases.

The soldiers’ lawyers charge that KBR was aware of the risk but kept it secret. KBR has said it collected air samples that showed low levels of the chemical. Doyle’s team also is representing soldiers in cases pending in Oregon and West Virginia.

One of the exposed soldiers, Lt. Col. James Gentry, 52, of Mitchell, Ind., died in November. Gentry, a nonsmoker, was diagnosed in 2006 with a rare form of lung cancer. Military doctors say it most likely was caused by the exposure.

“Only the good Lord knows what happened at that site,” said Maj. Gen. R. Martin Umbarger, Indiana’s top-ranking National Guard general, at the funeral of Gentry, who commanded the group including soldiers from a battalion based in Jasper, Ind., and Tell City, Ind.

Another soldier, David Moore, 42, of Dubois, Ind., died in 2008.

For Full Article

by Melissa Swan of WHAS-ABC 11 (Louisville, KY)

(WHAS11) – Indiana National Guard troops gathered to say goodbye to one of their commanding officers on Tuesday, Lt. Colonel Jim Gentry. Gentry believed his terminal cancer was directly related to his service in Iraq and even after death the 52-year-old Indiana National Guard commander is continuing a fight for his troops through a lawsuit.

Veterans from several wars held the stars and stripes as members of Jim Gentry’s family, both by blood and by military arrived for a final, formal goodbye.

“He was the type of person that loved the challenge, loved soldiers, loved to work with soldiers,” said Major General Dan Colglazier, a retired member of the Indiana National Guard.

Inside the chapel, were many of Jim Gentry’s soldiers, their patches for the infantry and for Indiana worn proudly on their sleeves.

Gentry entered the Army in 1981 as an infantry man and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was among the first National Guard troops in the country to be deployed to Iraq. There he commanded soldiers throughout the country.

“We always talked about how to take care of the troops and how to fulfill his mission..Never about how he was doing, what kind of condition he was in..It was always his soldiers and the unit and the mission,” added Maj. General Colglazier.

It was during Gentry’s first tour of duty, in 2003, he and other Indiana National Guard soldiers first noticed a yellow substance in the sand near Basra.

They were guarding American contractors restoring the Iraqi oil fields. That yellow substance was later confirmed to be a cancer causing chemical, sodium dichromate.

Gentry would later come to believe that the sodium dichromate led to his terminal cancer.

Before his death, Gentry joined in a federal lawsuit against KBR, the American military contractor restoring the Iraqi oil fields.

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