Judge awards $680K to Hawaii military families over fuel-tainted water

A federal judge has awarded a total of more than $680,000 to 17 families who say they were sickened by a 2021 jet fuel leak into a Navy drinking water system in Hawaii. The bellwether cases set the legal tone for another 7,500 military family members, civilians and service members whose lawsuits are still awaiting resolution.

U.S. District Judge Leslie Kobayashi handed down the ruling Wednesday, awarding from $5,000 to more than $104,000 to each plaintiff. In her order, Kobayashi wrote that it was clear that even though the contaminated water could have caused many of the kinds of medical problems the military families experienced, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a direct link.

The amount awarded to each plaintiff was significantly smaller than the roughly $225,000 to $1.25 million that their attorney, Kristina Baehr, requested during the two-week trial in federal court in Honolulu.

As bellwether plaintiffs, the 17 were chosen because they were seen as representative of the thousands of other people whose cases are still pending.

Baehr called the damage awards disappointing but said the families “prevailed against all odds against the U.S. Government.”

“These families can be proud that they helped prove to the world what truly happened when the Navy poisoned the water supply near Pearl Harbor and sickened so many,” Baehr said in a news release. “The Court rejected the Government’s argument that thousands of our clients were just psychosomatic and that there was not enough fuel to make anyone sick.”

Baehr said the legal team was reviewing options for resolving the thousands of remaining cases.

The government admitted liability for the spill before the trial began, but its attorneys disputed whether the plaintiffs were exposed to enough jet fuel to cause the vomiting, rashes and other alleged negative health effects.