Flint water crisis draws multiple suits

Cases are not a slam-dunk, law teacher says.

Legal actions mount in Michigan city’s lead-contamination saga.

One lawsuit seeks to replace lead-leaching water lines at no cost to customers. Another seeks money for thousands of Flint residents who unwittingly drank toxic water. A third complaint has been filed on behalf of people with Legionnaires’ disease.

While government officials scramble to rid Flint’s tap water of lead, victims are suing Gov. Rick Snyder, the former mayor, rank-and-file public employees and almost anyone else who may have had a role in supplying the troubled city with corrosive river water for 18 months. The lawsuits accuse them of violating civil rights, wrecking property values and enriching themselves by selling a contaminated product.

“How can they look at themselves in the mirror?” asked New York attorney Hunter Shkolnik, who filed the latest lawsuit Monday on behalf of 2-year-old Sophia Waid.

Sophia’s father, Luke Waid, said blood tests revealed elevated levels of lead. Those tests were done long before Flint’s tap water was identified as the culprit in 2015.

“She’s constantly on edge,” Waid said of his daughter.

His lawsuit, which seeks an unspecified financial award, is one of at least seven complaints involving Flint in state and federal courts.

The city’s supply was switched from Detroit water to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure in 2014, when Flint was under state-appointed emergency management.

While key facts are undisputed, these cases still are no slam-dunk for lawyers specializing in personal injury.

State government has defenses, especially a long-recognized cloak of immunity in certain lawsuits, said Chris Hastings, who teaches at Western Michigan University Cooley Law School.

“Defense lawyers are … going to come in with narrow, technical defenses that exist regardless of those issues,” Hastings said. “Courts are good at setting the emotions aside and looking at the law.”

But, he said, victims can point to “gross negligence” as a path around governmental immunity.

“That’s probably the best angle,” Hastings said. “But it’s likely, with the wide net that’s cast, that a number of defendants will still have a ‘we-didn’t-do-it’ defense.”

Snyder spokesman Dave Murray declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate for the governor’s office to discuss pending litigation.

MIKE HOUSEHOLDER / AP Luke Waid, with his daughter, Sophia, 2, and son, Luke Jr., seeks unspecified damages from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Michigan and the city of Flint, claiming Sophia has been sickened by the city’s water in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.