A separate lawsuit against Lockheed Martin in federal court in Los Angeles, involving different plaintiffs, is unaffected by the settlement in the state case. Plaintiffs' attorney Bruce L. Simon said Tuesday that settlement talks are underway, but Lockheed Martin has not made an offer in that case.
On Tuesday, Foley said he notified company officials that his clients would accept the company's settlement offer. Foley has declined to say how much each plaintiff will get after court costs and attorney fees. According to figures provided by one plaintiff, however, the settlement would average about $3,000 per family.
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The settlement will be divided among the plaintiffs based on a number of factors, Foley said, including how long they lived in Burbank, how close they lived to Lockheed Martin's factories and the kinds of illnesses they have suffered.
Without the settlement, Foley said, many of the claims may have been dismissed next month.
Lockheed Martin has argued the plaintiffs waited too long after learning about the potential dangers of living near the Lockheed Martin plant to file their lawsuits.
Based on previous decisions, West, the judge, could find that anyone who had a newspaper delivered to their home between 1984 and 1994 should have known about Lockheed Martin's toxic releases, so they missed the one-year statute of limitations to sue the company.
If the cases were dismissed, the plaintiffs could be held liable for Lockheed Martin's legal costs, Foley said.
"It's obviously an issue," he said. "Most of our clients are elderly and own their own homes," which they could lose if Lockheed Martin sought to recoup its costs from them.
But Lockheed Martin's Rymer said the company would never seek to force people to sell homes.
"That's nonsense. We have not been in this litigation to take people's houses," she said. "We have been in this litigation to defend ourselves, to establish that we have not put people at risk, and we feel we have accomplished that. And we will continue to defend ourselves against meritless claims."
Murray-Madrid, 44, and her sister, Erin Baker, 43, said they voted against taking the money, but they were outvoted by the other plaintiffs and the settlement was accepted for all.
"I think the settlement is a ridiculously low amount of money," Murray-Madrid said.
She asserts that her medical symptoms--from seizures to Hodgkin's disease--can all be linked directly to the chemicals that Lockheed Martin has admitted releasing into the environment.
