A flood of lawsuits has been filed this month over the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, but the unprecedented situation that exposed thousands of children to lead contamination has plaintiffs lawyers scrambling to figure out who — if anyone — will pay.
As a U.S. House committee held hearings this month over the problems in Flint, more than 30 cases hit the courts, boosting the total to about 40 lawsuits. The claims are all over the map. Some have been filed under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, while others assert gross negligence or constitutional claims. Some are class actions, some individual cases. And a lengthy list of government officials named as defendants, including Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who testified on Capitol Hill on March 17, has expanded to include three engineering firms that studied Flint’s water.
