The U.S. Navy has received over 546,500 claims for compensation from individuals impacted by decades of water contamination at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to a recent court filing. This case is now one of the largest injury cases in history. The number of claims may fluctuate slightly, as the Navy continues to review additional claims submitted by the August 10 deadline and removes any duplicates.
These administrative claims are a necessary step for claimants seeking compensation for injuries they believe are related to the contaminated water. The number of claims surpasses the nearly 400,000 lawsuits filed against 3M Co. over its military-issue earplugs, previously considered the largest multidistrict litigation in history.
While the Navy has not provided a final count of claims, it is committed to reviewing each one and resolving every valid Camp Lejeune Justice Act (CLJA) claim as fairly and quickly as possible. The contamination at Camp Lejeune was first discovered by the U.S. Marines in 1982, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services later acknowledged that chemicals in the water between 1953 and 1987 may have affected a million people, leading to serious illnesses such as kidney cancer, leukemia, and bladder cancer.
The August 10 deadline marked two years since President Joe Biden signed legislation that included the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. This act opened a two-year window for Camp Lejeune claims, requiring individuals seeking compensation to file an administrative claim with the U.S. Navy before pursuing a federal lawsuit. This followed years of state and federal court dismissals of lawsuits based on North Carolina state law.
So far, just over 2,000 lawsuits have been filed by individuals whose claims were not resolved at the administrative level, and these cases will be heard in a single federal court in North Carolina. The first trials are not expected to begin until later next year. The process of resolving administrative claims has been slow, with only about 150 cases resolved as of earlier this month, according to the U.S. Navy.
In comparison, the ongoing litigation over 3M’s earplugs has involved more than 390,000 lawsuits since the multidistrict litigation (MDL) was created in 2019. These earplugs were widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2015. Last year, 3M agreed to pay $6.01 billion to settle nearly 260,000 remaining lawsuits from current and former U.S. military service members who claimed they suffered hearing loss due to the earplugs.
