A federal district court in Ohio has assigned a Columbus attorney to act as mediator in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against current and former contractors at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site.
John Camillus was assigned Oct. 2 to be mediator in the case, surrounding the death of a 13-year-old Piketon, Ohio boy, Braden Aaron Lee Lykins, who lived near the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
“Within 14 days, the mediator and parties will confer to set a date, time, and location for mediation in November 2023, or within 60 days of this notice,” according to the online notice on the case in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
After the young Lykins died in March 2021 from acute promyelocytic leukemia, the boy’s father, Brad Allen Lykins, filed suit in June 2022 against a group of Portsmouth contractors.
The elder Lykins alleged the DOE contractors wrongly allowed large amounts of contamination to escape the DOE cleanup site. In September 2022, the elder Lykins agreed to make a settlement demand by October 2023.
The litigation is presided over by U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley, who referred many of the preliminary proceedings to Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers.
The defendant contractors are Bechtel Jacobs, BWXT Conversion Services, Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, Mid-America Conversion Services, United States Enrichment Corporation and Uranium Disposition Services.
The Lykins case is one of several lawsuits filed against the DOE contractors following the May 2019 closing of a local school, Zahn’s Corner Middle School, after the public disclosure of contamination from enriched uranium at the school.
