Senate Proposal Aims to Spur Camp Lejeune Toxic Water Payouts

A North Carolina senator is moving to revisit the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, asserting that the 2022 landmark legislation hasn’t done enough to quickly compensate veterans, workers, and their families sickened by toxic waters at the Marine base.

More than two years have passed since Marines and others with cancer and other life-threatening conditions were allowed to start filing claims to the Navy. About 408,000 claims were submitted before the two-year filing window ended in August.

The Navy has not said how many claims have been processed but said it is working to extend settlement offers “to as many claimants as quickly as possible.” It has so far offered payouts, together worth $38.8 million, to only about 400 claimants.

Thousands more are awaiting trials in the Eastern District of North Carolina after filing lawsuits because the Navy denied their claims or failed to resolve them within six months.

“We’ve got an issue with just the sheer number of cases that need to be adjudicated,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

The bill he’s filing as soon as Thursday would expand where veterans could challenge the government’s decision on their claims to the courts in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and South Carolina. Right now, all the disputed cases must be filed in the North Carolina district.

The legislation is expected to cap the fees attorneys can charge to represent claimants and reinstate jury trials for those cases. Justice Department lawyers in 2023 petitioned for only bench trials, arguing that Congress had not made explicit the plaintiffs’ right to jury trials. The North Carolina judges agreed in February 2024.

If and how soon Congress could take up the bill is unclear. Tillis’ legislation mirrors a version he introduced last session that didn’t advance, despite bipartisan support. The power and priorities have since shifted on the Hill, but Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Bloomberg Law that he intends to co-sponsor the bill this time around as well.

‘Fighting Everything’

In passing the 2022 Camp Lejeune Justice Act, Congress acknowledged that as many as 1 million people had been exposed to toxic water on the North Carolina base between 1953 and 1987. With so many potential victims, the litigation could become one of the largest mass torts in history, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that the government could pay out as much as $21 billion.

The Justice Department didn’t reply to a request for comment and the number of cases it had settled.

J. Edward Bell III, who leads the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the North Carolina lawsuits, said the process of resolving the cases is moving so slowly because the government “is fighting everything,” from diagnoses to the links between claimants’ sicknesses and the base.

“This is not what Congress had in mind, to think that the government would go in and tear down the basis for these Marines’ recovery,” Bell said.

Andrew Van Arsdale, an attorney who has filed close to 10,000 claims for alleged Camp Lejeune victims, said about 600 of his clients had died waiting for compensation. Others, he said, are worried that the upheaval in Washington and cost-cutting of the Trump administration could roil the units in the Justice Department and the Navy handling Camp Lejeune claims.

“By passing this Camp Lejeune Justice Act, you made a promise,” Van Arsdale said of the government. “By not living up to that promise, they’re worse off now than they would have been had the promise never been made.”

Tillis, who is up for re-election in 2026, made it clear that the measure was not a “messaging” bill. “I want an outcome,” he said.

The four judges in the Eastern District of North Carolina have scheduled a March 25 hearing on how to proceed. The first trials are not expected to begin until later this year.

The case is Camp Lejeune Water Litigation, E.D.N.C., No: 7:23-cv-00897.