Levy Konigsberg Files Flint Lawsuits for More Than 20 Lead-Poisoned Children

Today Lee-Anne Walters filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Genesee County in Flint, Michigan, on behalf of her four children who were lead poisoned by water in Michigan’s 7th largest City. Mrs. Walters is known for her role in helping expose lead contamination in the Flint water system. According to the Centers for Disease Control: “No safe blood lead level in children has been identified … [and] [l]ead exposure can affect nearly every system in the body.”1 Unlike nearly all of the cases filed stemming from the Flint Water Crisis to date, Mrs. Walters, represented by the New York-based law firm Levy Konigsberg LLP, and the Flint-based Robinson Carter & Crawford PLLC, filed an individual lawsuit on behalf of her four children based on their own personal injuries.

At the same time Mrs. Walters’ case was filed, the same two law firms simultaneously filed 8 other lawsuits for other Flint parents on behalf of their individual children who were also lead poisoned. The 9 complaints, each 40 pages in length, name six corporate entities that had various responsibilities with respect to the treatment, monitoring, and safety of the Flint water prior to and during the Flint Water Crisis. The lawsuits also name 3 individual government, or former government, employees who played significant roles in the misconduct that led to the poisoning of thousands of children in Flint. The firms representing the Plaintiffs are preparing additional filings on behalf of other parents of children in Flint who have been lead-poisoned.

In the opening paragraph in each of the individual Complaints filed today, the Plaintiffs declared: “Only this individual lawsuit – and not a class action – is able to redress and fully compensate the individual harm suffered by Plaintiff’s children.” Attorney Corey Stern who specializes in litigating individual lawsuits on behalf of lead-poisoned children, stated: “It’s time for the kids to be heard. With so much talk among officials, heads of corporations, and the media, the reality of what happened to these children – and how it will affect each of them for the rest of their lives – has been drowned out in the noise. These cases are about the children, and the individual harm that has been done to them.”

Mr. Stern has spent much of the last 6 weeks shuttling back-and-forth between Flint and his New York City office, meeting with Flint parents, community leaders and members of the clergy. Stern and his firm have been working closely with Robinson Carter & Crawford in evaluating hundreds of cases of children lead poisoned in Flint.

“We are prepared to file as many individual cases for children in Flint as there are children in this City who have been lead poisoned. The number of children harmed should not deprive each child of his or her individual day in Court,” said Stern.

1 http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/

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