DENVER—A federal judge has upheld a $350 million verdict against the former operators of the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
The lawsuit was filed in 1990 by about 15,000 landowners alleging that contamination from the plant lowered their property values.
In a ruling released this week, Judge John Kane said the plaintiffs were also entitled to 8 percent interest beginning the date the suit was filed. A plaintiffs’ lawyer says that brings the total to more than $900 million.
An attorney for the defendants, Dow Chemical Co. and Rockwell International Corp., says they will appeal. The companies had argued that the jury’s verdict should be overturned because it was inconsistent and exceeded a cap on punitive damages.
Kane ruled that the verdict was consistent with the instructions given to the jury and that the damages were “not excessive.”
“Defendants’ misconduct was not the result of a single incident but rather a series of incidents and also routine practices over decades of operating Rocky Flats, some of which were attended by circumstances of dishonesty, subterfuge and deceit,” Kane ruled.
Rocky Flats, about 15 miles northwest of Denver, made plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs. Production stopped in 1989 because of safety problems and the end of the Cold War.
