Tuesday’s $554 million jury award against the former operators of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant won’t become final until lawyers for the operators and the attorneys for the owners of 12,000 affected properties have time to file motions with him, a federal judge said Friday.
“There will be no final judgment entered until all the motions have been resolved,” said U.S. District Judge John Kane. “I will give you notice of the date it will be entered.”
The award, the largest civil verdict in Colorado, probably will be reduced once Kane applies law and damage caps. One lawyer in the case calculated the resulting award would be $352 million.
The verdict culminated a 16-year effort by the property owners and activists who believe the federal government hid behind a veil of national security to avoid taking responsibility for pollution from the Cold War-era plant.
Kane also said that before it’s decided how the money should be divided among the landowners, he would first like the Denver-based U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether the verdict is valid.
“What I’m trying to avoid is further delay in this case,” Kane said. “It makes no sense to make an allocation until a judgment by the Court of Appeals.”
To attempt to make the allocation now, which might necessitate Kane appointing a special master or trustee, “seems to be (a) frightful waste of time” given that the appeals process could last up to five years, Kane said.
The jury’s verdict against Dow Chemical and Rockwell International was intended to compensate the owners of 12,000 properties in the area of the plant for decreased property values due to plutonium contamination, and to punish the companies.
Dow and Rockwell have contended that while their workers were involved in the inherently dangerous mission of manufacturing nuclear weapons, their precautions were effective and nearby residents didn’t suffer because of their conduct.
David Bernick, a Chicago-based defense attorney, who immediately after the verdict asked to question the jurors and see the notes they wrote during deliberations, again asked that everything pertaining to the jurors and their deliberations be kept and not destroyed. Bernick said that in particular, he wanted to contact one juror who had been dismissed from the jury.
Kane assured him that he had already sealed documents pertaining to the jury, including their names. Kane berated Bernick for mentioning the juror by name, saying that the jurors’ names had been sealed to protect their privacy.
Kane said he also planned to issue within a relatively short time various opinions involving motions lawyers had raised about such things as jury instructions.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
