Volume 5, Issue 10

The United States: 10-29-97

As if Carol Browner didn't create enough problems by inventing “environmental justice,” now plaintiff lawyers have jumped onto the bandwagon and are injecting the venom of racism into the equation creating the inevitable legal quagmire of “environmental racism.” One toxic tort lawyer in New Orleans pointed out that it is very much a growth area. A recent $3.4 billion award to 8,000 people, due to a rail car spill, has been assessed as having used “…ethnic and class based appeals” even though racism was not specifically exploited. Defense lawyers and industry officials call the racism allegations ploys to bolster otherwise weak claims. Many studies have shown that low income neighborhoods develop around industrial sites rather than the other way around. We will only be hearing more of this as lawyers sharpen their knives.

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