By Stacey M. Brown
U.S. District Judge John Corbett O’Meara (click here) cast his bigotry into his decision.
The United States 6th Circuit Court of Appeals’ (click here) reversal of a federal court’s decision in two lawsuits filed by Flint, Michigan residents over the contamination of their drinking water, has emboldened lawyers and their plaintiffs, who said residents of the predominately African-American city still are being billed for dirty water they cannot use.
“The court’s decision means that the trial court’s dismissal of the case was legally incorrect and the appeals court has sent it back,” said Nicholas A. Szokoly, a partner in the Baltimore firm of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, who represents Flint residents in a class-action suit. “A lot of our case deals with the fact that residents in Flint have been charged three times the national rate for water because the city is trying to balance their budget and these charges and fees come at the exact time that they couldn’t use the water.”
Szokoly continued: “Not only did [the bills] come during the period in which they were getting contaminated water and having their children poisoned, but the water bills kept coming and they were told not to drink the water by an EPA mandate and they were also told that if they didn’t pay their bill, they’d have a lien placed on their home and face foreclosure. That’s not America.”
In a press release about Flint’s water system, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality said that the latest round of testing showed that 90 percent of the Tier I samples from Flint’s water system were at or below 6 parts per billion (PPB), which is less than half of the 15 PPB federal action level....
