Opinion ID: 3052430
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: The origins of this case trace back more than sixty years to the height of World War II when the federal government solicited Appellants E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., General Electric, Inc., UNC Nuclear Industries, Inc., Atlantic Richfield Co., and Rockwell International Corp., (collectively IN RE: HANFORD NUCLEAR RESERVATION LITIGATION 9545 “Defendants”) to operate the Hanford Nuclear Weapons Reservation (“Hanford”) in southeastern Washington. The Hanford Reservation was a plutonium-production facility that helped make the atomic bomb that dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in World War II. A regrettable Hanford byproduct was the radioiodine emitted into the surrounding area. The plaintiffs in this litigation are over two thousand residents who now claim that these emissions, known as I-131, caused various cancers and other life-threatening diseases. The first group of plaintiffs filed a complaint in 1990 under the federal statute governing nuclear accidents, the Price-Anderson Act (“PAA”), claiming they were entitled to damages for injuries arising from a nuclear incident pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 2210. The history is discussed in our earlier opinions in In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation, 292 F.3d 1124 (9th Cir. 2002) (“In re Hanford”); and Berg v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., 293 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir. 2002) (“Berg”). After almost two decades of litigation, which already has included two appeals to this court, the parties in 2005 agreed to a bellwether trial. The trial was designed to produce a verdict that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the parties’ respective cases and thus focused on six plaintiffs (“Plaintiffs”) who were representative of the larger group. The purpose of the trial was to promote settlement and bring long-overdue resolution to this litigation. Before us on appeal is a litany of issues stemming from the bellwether trial. A threshhold issue is whether Defendants may seek complete immunity under the common law government contractor defense, because they were operating Hanford at the request of the federal government. We hold that the defense is inapplicable as a matter of law, because Congress enacted the PAA before the courts recognized the government contractor defense, and the PAA provides a comprehensive liability scheme that precludes Defendants’ reliance on such a defense. 9546 IN RE: HANFORD NUCLEAR RESERVATION LITIGATION In the alternative, Defendants argue that even if they are not immune, they are not strictly liable for any I-131 emissions, because the amounts of the emissions were within federally-authorized levels; the plutonium-production process was not an abnormally dangerous activity that would create strict liability; and even if it were, Defendants qualify for the “public duty” exception to strict liability. The district court held that none of Defendants’ contentions were sufficient to relieve them of strict liability for the injuries they caused. We agree. With respect to the trial itself, the district court with admirable diligence ruled on many issues of first impression. We hold that under Washington law, the district court properly instructed the jury that to impose liability, it had to find Hanford was the “but for” cause of Plaintiffs’ diseases and not just a contributing cause under the more lenient “substantial factor” test. The court also made a host of evidentiary rulings that are before us on appeal. We hold that three of these rulings constitute reversible error with respect to three of the Bellwether Plaintiffs. There are statute of limitations issues as well. We hold that any Hanford Plaintiffs who filed independent suits pending class certification are entitled to class action tolling. Lastly, we hold that the district court properly dismissed any medical monitoring claims as not cognizable under the PAA. This is consistent with our decision in Berg, 293 F.3d 1127.