He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens.
The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. in leadership positions.
The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare. ‘‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a raise.’’Bilott doesn’t regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. Bernard Riley, DuPont’s in-house lawyer, said that they would investigate the property and animals with the E.P.A. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. ‘‘It seemed like it would have real-world impact,’’ he said. ‘‘This cow’s done a lot of suffering,’’ he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen.‘‘This is bad,’’ Bilott said to himself. ‘‘I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career — and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. ‘‘Let’s put it that way.’’The video cuts to a calf’s bisected head. Two: If I do, is it harmful?
The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. ‘‘I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims,’’ he said. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations — some dark, some green — and textures. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. during those decades. ‘‘I don’t even like the looks of them,’’ he says. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesn’t have a diagnosis.A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. Then he took on an environmental suit that would Sarah doesn’t remember him speaking. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants’ neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly — the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped — a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV.
The class voted in favor of this approach, and within months, nearly 70,000 West Virginians were trading their blood for a $400 check.Wilbur fed a videotape into the VCR. At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. Images jumped and repeated. Bilott had every reason to walk away.The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches.Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. ‘‘He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. ‘‘I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,’’ Winter says. His specialty was defending chemical companies. Credit Bryan Schutmaat for The New York TimesTo find articles by the same author, please click on the name.DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it.
The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later — the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn’t recognize PFOA as a toxin — if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself?
Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town.