Opinion ID: 2805006
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Three lawsuits

Text: The Plaintiffs are individuals who worked on the remediation of the coal-ash spill at the KIF Plant, plus some of their spouses. Greg Adkisson, along with 48 other individuals, filed suit against Jacobs in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in August 2013, alleging claims of outrageous conduct, battery, negligence, negligence per se, intentional and/or reckless failure to warn, reckless infliction of emotional distress, fraud, misrepresentation and fraudulent concealment, and strict liability for ultrahazardous or abnormally dangerous activity. See Adkisson et al. v. Jacobs Eng’g Grp., Inc., No. 3:13-CV-505. The Plaintiffs allege that Jacobs improperly monitored the fly ash; inadequately trained the workers about the hazards associated with inhaling toxic fly ash; inadequately monitored their medical conditions; denied their requests for respirators, dust masks, and PPE; exposed them to high concentrations of flyash toxic constituents; and fraudulently concealed and denied that they had been so exposed. No. 14-6207 Adkisson et al. v. Jacobs Eng’g Grp., Inc. Page 4 Alleging “eye problems, sinus problems, pulmonary problems, heart problems and other healthrelated problems” from their work on site, the Plaintiffs seek compensatory and punitive damages. In November 2013, Kevin Thompson, Joy Thompson, and Shaun Travis Smith filed a substantially similar suit against Jacobs in the same jurisdiction. See Thompson et al. v. Jacobs Eng’g Grp., Inc., No. 3:13-CV-666. Joe and Taylor Cunningham then sued Jacobs on the same grounds in January 2014, also in the Eastern District of Tennessee. See Cunningham et al. v. Jacobs Eng’g Grp., Inc., No. 3:14-CV-20. Jacobs moved to dismiss all three actions for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the first motion being filed in November 2013 and the latter two in February 2014. In July 2014, the magistrate judge who was assigned to the case granted a motion by the Thompson plaintiffs to consolidate the three cases, with Adkisson, as the first to be filed, serving as the lead case. Two months later, the district court granted Jacobs’s Rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss all of the Plaintiffs’ claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction based on Jacobs’s eligibility for government-contractor immunity as a corollary of the discretionary-function exception to the FTCA. This timely appeal followed.