Utility Workers Torn Between Lead Cable Exposure and 'Quitting Their Jobs': Plaintiffs

Verizon made a “profit-driven decision” to expose thousands of utility workers to a “lethal toxin” due to its refusal to clean up its “obsolete lead cable network,” said plaintiffs Greg Bostard and Tony Rockhill in their opposition Monday (docket 1:23-cv-08564) in U.S. District Court for New Jersey to Verizon’s April 18 motion to dismiss their second amended complaint (see 2404190011). Bostard’s original Aug. 23 class action alleged that his “direct and regular exposure” to Verizon’s toxic lead cables during his long career as a Comcast utility worker caused him “a present injury” that increases the risk he will develop more “catastrophic health effects” (see 2308240005). He amended his complaint Jan. 12 to assert that he’s not seeking personal injury damages, only relief for the “present economic injury” he suffers by having to pay for his own lead-poisoning tests (see 2401160001). Bostard’s second amended complaint was filed March 18, “solely for the purpose” of adding 16-year Altice veteran Rockhill as an additional plaintiff (see 2403190036). Unless their suit is successful, Verizon’s lead cables “will continue to put thousands of utility workers’ health at risk,” said the Bostard-Rockhill opposition. Utility workers “face a choice between paying out of pocket for medical testing to understand the extent to which they have been poisoned or taking a risk on their health,” it said: “Not only that, but unless this suit is successful, utility workers face a choice between continuing to be poisoned or quitting their jobs.” New Jersey law doesn’t force the “victims of corporate misconduct” into that choice, said the opposition. New Jersey instead holds polluters accountable when their pollution forces people to seek medical monitoring by allowing post-injury, pre-symptom recovery in toxic tort litigation for reasonable medical surveillance costs, it said. Both New Jersey and federal law require polluters “to abate dangerous environmental conditions they create,” it said. To avoid paying for the dangers it created, Verizon asks this court “to rewrite New Jersey and federal law to disallow medical monitoring and abatement suits,” it said. Verizon argues for an array of rules -- “some untested, some discredited, but none meritorious” -- that would preclude “virtually all medical monitoring class action cases,” it said. But neither the 3rd Circuit nor the New Jersey Supreme Court “has ever adopted Verizon’s extreme positions,” it said. This court “should not do so here,” it said.