Nearly 630 of the plaintiffs affected by Navy water contamination in Central Oʻahu will receive a combined payment of $17 million in the latest batch of Red Hill court settlements announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.DOJ leaders touted the move as a good-faith step toward resolving the matter, in which scores of military personnel, their families and civilian workers were sickened by tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel spilled in 2021. Some victims, however, called the deals “a slap in the face” that don’t go nearly far enough to compensate all the damage done.The settlements apply to family members who were sickened — not the service members themselves — and they stem from two lawsuits brought against the Navy in recent years over Red Hill contamination under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA.Together, those suits — Feindt v. United States and Hughes v. United States — represent more than 6,500 claims.
Some 3,600 Red Hill plaintiffs in those suits have now reached settlements with the federal government over their health ordeals, according to the DOJ, out of more than 6,500 claims.
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Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate called the latest settlements a “just and fair resolution.”“We look forward to paying additional claims once they’re approved,” he said in a statement Wednesday.Kristina Baehr, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said the roughly $27,000 awarded to each of the 629 plaintiffs who took the deal fell far short of the minimum amount laid out in an order by U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi. Kobayashi’s order, according to Baehr, called for the federal government to pay between $38,500 and $76,000.
