Department of Energy contractors that have worked at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio last week asked a federal court to throw out the latest complaint by a plaintiff who alleged radioactive contamination escaped from the shuttered gaseous diffusion plant and caused his cancer.
The litigation by Joshua Shaw, who blames current and former contractors at the Portsmouth Site for his leukemia, should be thrown out for failure to state a claim, the group of eight contractors said in a joint brief filed Feb. 26. The defendants also told the U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio the lawsuit was filed too late.
Shaw “vaguely alleges that he was exposed to radiation” from the defendants work for DOE at the property in Pike County and this led to his diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukemia in 2008, the defendants said. But Shaw did not file suit until November 2023, or 15 years later, according to the defense brief.
That’s well beyond the typical two-year statute of limitations under the Price Anderson Act, the defendants said.
It appears the plaintiff “has recovered” from the illness but suffers from aftereffects such as anxiety and fatigue, the defendants said in the brief.
The defendants are Bechtel Jacobs Company, BWXT Conversion Services, Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, Mid-America Conversion Services, United States Enrichment Corporation and Uranium Disposition Services.
Claims against BWXT Conversion Services, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth and Mid-America Conversion Services are “wholly implausible” because they didn’t start work at the site until after the date of the 2008 diagnosis, according to the defense motion.
