Two lawsuits filed yesterday claim that the federal government and the companies it hired to run the Paducah uranium plant kept some of the dangers of the working conditions secret from employees. One suit says at least three workers contracted rare brain tumors. Lawyer David R. Smith of Nashville, Tenn., filed suit in Paducah on behalf of three former workers, alleging that their jobs at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant caused the brain tumors, benign growths on the pituitary gland. In a class-action suit, one or more persons bring a legal action on behalf of themselves and a much larger group, who all have the same grounds for action.
Claims made in filing any civil suit represent only one side of the situation.
None of the plaintiffs was aware of his exposure to radiation until news reports published last fall, the suit alleged. Dew worked at the plant from 1951 to 1988, spending time in a building where uranium compounds were processed and rising to become a top executive. He developed a pituitary tumor in 1964. Vandeven, who died in 1986, was employed at the plant from 1955 to 1994 and had a pituitary tumor removed in 1984. Lynch, who worked there from 1952 to 1985, was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor in 1977 and had the gland removed in 1979.