An anxiety-filled Veterans Day for victims of Camp Lejeune water

WASHINGTON — Michelle James, who lost her husband to cancer that she believes was caused by contaminated drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, is among thousands of people with U.S. military connections who did not feel very appreciated this Veterans Day.

The Florida woman is the founder of a website that provides support for widows like her, nearly 400 women still waiting for compensation from the government for the deaths of loved ones who were exposed to toxic chemicals at the North Carolina base decades ago.

“A lot of the widows I’ve spoken to are very, very disheartened,” James said in a phone interview last week. “One of them said her husband served two tours in Vietnam, only to be killed by the Marines he loved. And that kind of sums up how a lot of people feel.”

After Congress passed a law in 2022 allowing victims of the Camp Lejeune contamination to file damage claims with the Navy or lawsuits in federal court, more than 400,000 administrative claims and 3,600 cases are still pending, with only a handful of settlements worked out, according to the Justice Department and attorneys involved in the litigation.

As many as 1 million Marines, family members and other military or civilian employees who spent at least 30 days at Camp Lejeune when the water was contaminated between 1953 and 1987 were eligible to file claims with the Navy by August 2024, and, if no settlement was offered within six months, they could file lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Eric Flynn, one of the lead attorneys for plaintiffs in the cases, said the first trials for lawsuits involving some of the most common diseases claimed by victims — non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia and cancers of the bladder, kidney and liver — could begin early next year, after lawyers for both sides have completed all their depositions, evidence-gathering and motions with the four federal judges in the district.

Their hope is that verdicts in the first bellwether cases would determine the types of settlements offered to those whose administrative claims with the Navy are verified.

Suspicion of government motive

Some Camp Lejeune victims accuse the government of slow-walking cases in anticipation that most of the plaintiffs will have died before settlements are made. Their lawyers say victims are dying from diseases linked to the contamination nearly every day. Most of them lived at the base in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

“This is nothing more than the government saying, ‘Thank you for your service. Go f— yourself,'” said Mike Partain, a Florida man who was diagnosed with breast cancer 39 years after he was born at Camp Lejeune in 1967. He said his mother drank the contaminated water the entire time she was pregnant with him.

“You have the right to file and pursue your legal claims. But guess what? You’ll never see anything, because we’ll make sure you’re dead before that,” he said.

The Justice Department has denied stalling on the litigation, arguing it is only trying to make sure claims are legitimate before moving toward trials and settlements. The DOJ press office responded to a request for comment Friday with an email saying inquiries were not being monitored during the government shutdown.

Partain cited an Oct. 29 report by ProPublica that the Department of Veterans Affairs is scaling back benefits for veterans covered by the 2022 law, known as the PACT Act, as evidence that the government is doing all it can to reduce payments to servicemembers harmed by exposure to toxic contaminants during their service.

The PACT Act guarantees health care for thousands of veterans who say they were harmed by toxins during their service overseas, including when air quality was affected by burn pits used to dispose of waste during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ProPublica reported that the VA is eliminating male breast cancer as a “presumptive service connection,” meaning those diagnosed with the disease would no longer qualify for benefits. The article said the VA confirmed the decision was made because President Donald Trump’s executive order in January — “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — essentially means breast cancer is a reproductive disorder that does not apply to men.

Partain said his claim that his breast cancer was caused by the Camp Lejeune contamination won’t be affected because the PACT Act applies to veterans who were harmed overseas while the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, which was part of the PACT Act, allows claims for cases of toxic exposure at the Marine base.

‘Slap in the face’

Still, he called the VA move “a slap in the face for the Marines, their families and every other veteran that’s served that has male breast cancer.” More than 130 men who served at Camp Lejeune have been diagnosed with breast cancer, he said.

“When you expose us to, you know, toxic chemicals, we can get breast cancer, just like women,” Partain said, citing his diagnosis of invasive ductal carcinoma. “If their argument is that male breasts are not reproductive organs, then why do I have milk ducts in my breast?”

House Veterans’ Affairs ranking member Mark Takano, D-Calif., wrote to VA Secretary Doug Collins demanding a reversal of the decision to eliminate male breast cancer as a service-connected disease.

“This Administration’s actions show more interest in dismantling veterans’ hard-won benefits than delivering the care they earned,” Takano wrote. “Cancer does not care about ideology, and neither should the agency charged with caring for those who served.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also introduced a bill to require the VA to be more transparent about expanding or removing benefits under the PACT Act.

The legislation of greatest interest to Camp Lejeune victims are House and Senate bills aimed at speeding up the litigation pending in federal court. The bills would expand jurisdiction over the lawsuits to other federal courts in the mid-Atlantic region, allow plaintiffs to request jury trials and cap attorney fees for claimants at 20 percent for settlements and 25 percent for trials.

The House bill from Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., has 72 co-sponsors, including 40 Democrats and 32 Republicans, while the bill from Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has three Democratic and two Republican co-sponsors. Spokespeople for the lawmakers on Friday said they hope to attach the legislation to some other must-pass bills before the end of the current session.

More than 20 veterans groups, including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Vietnam Veterans of America, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, have been lobbying hard for the legislation leading up to Veterans Day.

“This is an important time to reflect on how we treat our veterans and their family members after their service,” Daniel Elkins, founder and president of the Special Operations Association of America, said in a Nov. 3 news release. “What happened to the victims of water contamination at Camp Lejeune is a stain on America’s record.”

Michelle James’ organization, Lejeune Empowered Advocacy for Widows, is also urging action on the bills, especially the provision capping attorneys fees for victims.

“Some attorneys are charging up to 60 percent, and because there’s no cap, they can do whatever they want,” James said. “In my case, my settlement, if it ever comes through, I’ve got to share that between four people, and the attorney is going to get more money than me.”

James moved from the United Kingdom to Jacksonville, Fla., to marry former Marine Eric Holford in 2014. Holford told her he had multiple sclerosis and that he had heard about the Camp Lejeune water causing health problems, but neither believed there was a connection to Holford’s condition, she said.

But when Holford’s health deteriorated over the next several years with diagnoses of colorectal cancer, bladder cancer and spots on his liver and lungs, she was convinced there was a connection to his service. Holford was stationed at Camp Lejeune from 1984 to 1988. He died in 2019 at age 53.

James has met hundreds of widows whose spouses were former Marines who died from illnesses that appear to be service-connected. “They all have one thing in common — they were at Camp Lejeune,” she said.

“My message is that Congress does need to do something because, for those that are really sick, at least, make their last days be comfortable,” James said. “You know, don’t let them have to be worrying about finances for their loved ones, or because what’s happened is the husbands were the main breadwinners and they’re gone. This is the other side of the story: The husbands have gone and the wives are left to pick up the pieces.”