Preston Mulligan has been a reporter in the Maritimes for more than 20 years.
Court documents show 13 plaintiffs claim the town was negligent in its management of the site "in a matter that has caused pollution and environmental damage to ground and surface water, soil and aquatic life."
Was a sawmill tank drained properly?
In the court documents, the plaintiffs say the source of the contamination comes from the old 246,000-litre dip tank on the sawmill site.
Councillor Clifford Hood, chair of the town’s water utility, said while there may be contamination on the old sawmill site, he doesn’t believe it’s spreading to neighbouring properties "Our position is that we have not caused any of the allegations that are being made by those plaintiffs," said Hood.
Contamination ‘not moving’: councillor The community’s fear of contamination began to grow last year when the town spread garbage-filled compost over the former sawmill site.
But residents saw trash in the compost in early 2016 and complained.
They determined the compost wasn’t a source of contamination.
They also allege the contamination on the sawmill site made its way into the well water of three of the plaintiffs listed.
According to the court documents, several of the plaintiffs received a notice from the town in June of 2016 indicating that "contamination is known or suspected to directly impact surface water or sediment on the plaintiffs properties."

How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit.
In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country.
John-Mark Stensvaag, an environmental law professor at the University of Iowa, said that orders to re-try cases “are not as rare as one might think.” “This does not mean that the plaintiffs have no case,” he added, “it only means that, in [Judge Carlson’s] opinion, they have not presented a case justifying the jury’s verdict and should be given a second opportunity to present an adequate case.” Carter Road Water Contamination There’s little question that something is very wrong with the water on Carter Road, despite lingering questions in the legal battles centering around that contaminated water.
Indeed, on New Year’s Day 2009, one of Dimock’s contaminated drinking water wells did explode.
In 2010, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection concluded that Cabot’s drilling operations had contaminated the drinking water supplies of 19 homes in Dimock and reached an agreement with Cabot requiring the company to pay out $4.6 million over the harm to the families’ wells.
Throughout EPA’s work in Dimock, the Agency has used the best available scientific data to provide clarity to Dimock residents and address their concerns about the safety of their drinking water.” A PowerPoint presentation obtained by DeSmog and published in 2013 shows that EPA scientists had concluded there was a definitive link between the drilling in the area and water contamination.
That presentation was barred from being entered into evidence by Judge Carlson, despite the plaintiffs’ request to present it to the jury.
Evidence Catch-22 An underlying theme of the case for the plaintiffs’ attorney Lewis and her clients has centered around a struggle over the evidence the plaintiffs could present to the jury, which has come back to haunt them with the recent ruling by Judge Carlson.
Ely, the lead plaintiff at the trial, also said he was harassed by McAleer in a sworn testimony exhibited as part of the same June 2016 court filing submitted to the court by Lewis and Radow.
As a result of McAleer’s conduct, Judge Carlson ordered the jury to be placed under escort by federal marshals when they entered and left the courthouse during the remainder of the trial.

Weak evidence and frequent out-of-bounds statements by plaintiffs’ counsel were cited by a federal judge in Pennsylvania in vacating a more than $4.2 million verdict awarded to two families against a natural gas company that they alleged negligently polluted their water supply.
Claims permitted at trial focused narrowly on negligence and private nuisance causes of action, but, according to Carlson, the attorney who tried the case made repeated comments in front of the jury that went against court orders that had previously tailored the claims.
"The court finds that, although counsel may have been seeking to deliver zealous advocacy on behalf of her clients she has known for years regarding a matter that holds deep meaning for her personally, the aggregation of the instances of inappropriate conduct throughout the trial cannot be allowed to stand where the court finds it very likely that they influenced the jury’s verdict in this case," Carlson said.
In an emailed statement to the press, New York attorney Leslie L. Lewis, who represented the plaintiffs, said the decision did not fully reflect what occurred in the courtroom over the course of the 10-day trial.
"Upon a first review of the decision, it appears that the court made no reference to the evidence and arguments contained in plaintiffs thoroughly-reasoned and legally-based papers," Lewis said.
"Plaintiffs reject the court’s conclusion that Cabot was robbed of a fair trial or that the unanimous, eight-person jury verdict was excessive."
Jeremy Mercer of Blank Rome, who represented Cabot Oil & Gas, did not return a call seeking comment.
However, a major hurdle in the case arose when the plaintiffs stipulated that problems with the water supply began before the drilling activities started.
According to Carlson, this created a "cause and effect" problem that was "never adequately explained by the plaintiffs, who time and again either evaded this issue, attempted to impeach their own stipulation, or endeavored to provide some alternative explanation for their own prior representations."
Carlson said that, because of the repeated defense objections and admonitions by the court, the jury may have come under the impression that it wasn’t getting the full story regarding the claims and that some facts were being hidden from them.

Years of conflict may still lie ahead for an already epic legal clash over water contamination in the Marcellus Shale town of Dimock, Pa. A federal court Friday scrapped a verdict against Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and ordered a new trial, ruling that evidence in the case simply did not support the jury’s $4.2 million finding last year in favor of two Dimock families that complained of fouled drinking water.
Chief Magistrate Judge Martin Carlson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania wrote that weaknesses in the plaintiffs’ arguments and "regrettable missteps" by their attorney undermined the verdict (E&E News PM, March 31).
"It’s an open-and-shut case as far as oil and gas contamination goes.
Industry supporters were elated, seeing Friday’s decision as vindication after last year’s $4.2 million hit to Cabot’s reputation.
The standards vary slightly by jurisdiction, but federal judges generally can set aside jury verdicts and order a new trial in any of these circumstances: Newly discovered evidence arises that could change the likely outcome.
"Nevertheless, upon consideration of the trial record, and following reflection on the substantial and varied weaknesses in the plaintiffs’ case together with the myriad examples of inappropriate conduct that repeatedly occurred in the jury’s presence and may have colored the outcome of this case," he said, "the Court is constrained to find that a new trial is not only justified, but required."
In November 2009, 44 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Cabot arguing that the company’s new natural gas wells were to blame for tainted water wells in the area.
The case narrowed further as the early 2016 trial approached, with Carlson tossing several claims against Cabot and barring the plaintiffs from presenting certain evidence that had not previously been produced during the many years of litigation.
If the settlement discussions fail, the parties will move on to a new trial at the district court.
The judge noted that some testimony from plaintiffs’ witnesses could persuade a reasonable jury that even though the families complained of water problems before Cabot started drilling, the company could have contributed to issues in the area.

Hundreds of current and former Bucks and Montgomery residents are party to a mass tort lawsuit for personal injury claims against six manufacturers of firefighting foams.
A writ of summons was filed Feb. 22 in Montgomery County court by Norristown law firm Creedon & Feliciani and others, on behalf of 461 current and former residents and individuals who worked or served on a trio of military bases in the area.
On Wednesday, Creedon & Feliciani stated in a post on its Facebook page that the plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages “as a result of their suffering from injuries/diseases they believe are caused by ingestion, etc.
of water polluted with the chemicals PFOA and PFOS.” The mass tort personal injury suit is separate from several class action lawsuits related to the contamination that have been filed by some of the same firms against the military and foam manufacturers.
Four of the class action suits make similar claims against the foam manufacturers: that their product was defective; that the companies had “known or should have known” the dangers of selling it; and that the companies failed to recall or warn users after its toxicity was established.
However, the class action suits make no reference to seeking awards for personal injuries.
Instead, they focus on winning a blood-testing program and health study, medical monitoring, a private well testing program, and for financial hardships such as cleaning up individual properties or water supplies.
Last month the plaintiffs in the class action suits asked the court to allow them to combine into a single case, and the firms involved are currently preparing a combined complaint, Feliciani said.
New York City law firm Weitz & Luxenberg is interim class counsel, meaning they will serve as a representative of the plaintiffs and firms from each of the individual cases until the court makes a decision about the class action status of the combined case.
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Honeywell will have to face class claims for negligence, nuisance, trespass and medical monitoring in a New York water contamination case, the Northern District of New York ruled Feb. 6 ( Baker v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. , 2017 BL 34914, N.D.N.Y., No.
The ruling came in closely-watched litigation over pervasive PFOA contamination in the town’s water supply, and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York wrestled with unsettled issues of New York tort law in its decision.
“This is a wonderful decision for the people of Hoosick Falls, who may now proceed with their lawsuit,” Robin Greenwald, of Weitz & Luxenberg in New York City told Bloomberg BNA Feb. 7.
“The court also invited the parties to appeal the decision, and we are presently considering our appellate options,” Pokedoff said in an e-mail.
Private water well owners also have a possessory interest in wells harmed by PFOA trespasses, and private nuisance claims may proceed because of the “special loss” well owners suffer from the installation of monitoring equipment, the court said.
It did, however, dismiss private nuisance claims brought by municipal water users.
Those plaintiffs presented public, rather than private, nuisance considerations, the court said.
Medical Monitoring Claims The companies also argued New York law barred medical monitoring claims brought by Baker and other plaintiffs with elevated PFOA levels, at least where there is no existing diagnosis.
There are “several complex and novel issues of New York law as to which the existing case law is significantly muddled,” and they warranted an immediate appeal of the order to the Second Circuit.
The law offices of Weitz & Luxenberg represented the plaintiffs.

New Hampshire federal court won’t reconsider remand efforts in water contamination case.
CONCORD, N.H. –– A New Hampshire federal court overseeing a water contamination case has refused to reconsider a motion to remand, rejecting the plaintiffs’ stance that when a proposed class is discrete in nature, a common sense presumption should be used to determine whether citizenship requirements have been met.
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