A group of residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex filed a federal class action lawsuit that claims government officials should have known about contamination at the former U.S.S. Lead site, and plans to demolish the complex and relocate the tenants discriminates against the residents.
The suit, filed by Kendra Mabry and five minors; Angela Espinoza and five minors; and Roberto Cabello Jr., against the City of East Chicago, Mayor Anthony Copeland, the East Chicago Housing Authority, ECHA director Tia Cauley, BP Products of North America, EI DuPont de Nemours and Company and the Atlantic Richfield Company, claims the defendants violated the Fair Housing Act.
The complaint claims the city and housing authority are discriminating against the residents because by demolishing the complex, the residents are being deprived of their rights to hold property, read the court filing, and caused the harmful conditions forcing them from their homes. The complaint adds those actions have a “disparate impact on Hispanic and African-American households.”
“That’s the real damage that we see,” said attorney Alex Mendoza, who is representing the plaintiffs.
The defendants allowed people to live in the area and did not inform them of the risk but all of a sudden decided to kick them out, Mendoza said.
The residents have to leave their homes and uproot their lives, Mendoza said. Between the cost of relocating, emotional distress and having to move out of their community, it’s a challenge for the residents, he said.
East Chicago Corporation Counsel Carla Morgan said the city had no comment on the pending litigation and had not received formal notice of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit asks the court to grant an injunction to prevent the defendants from forcing residents from their homes, read the filings, as well as damages.
The class action suit is the second filed in federal court because of the lead contamination in East Chicago. Lashawnda Walker filed a complaint in August that claimed the city was negligent in not notifying residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex of the lead issues at the site that have adversely affect their health.
Given that the most recent filing is a class action lawsuit, it must pass the hurdle of getting the class of plaintiffs certified, said Robert Knowles, associate professor of law at Valparaiso University.
In order to certify a class, the plaintiffs must define the parameters of who is in the class and who is out, Knowles said. That could mean people who lived in a certain area, he said, or used a certain product.
The four legal standards need to a class are numerosity, commonality, typicality and adequacy of representation, Knowles said.
The first step is simply proving there is a large number of people affected by a certain issue, Knowles said, and if more than 40 people are listed as plaintiffs, that threshold has been crossed.
To prove commonality, Knowles said a class must satisfy common questions of law or class. If the factual aspects of the various cases are different, he said it could be more difficult to meet that standard.
Typicality and adequacy of representation are the final two standards, Knowles said. For typicality, a lead plaintiff must be identified who most broadly represents the members of the class, he said, and adequacy shows that attorneys are capable of representing the plaintiffs.
If a judge certifies the class, that type of lawsuit can have both benefits and drawbacks.
“It’s very efficient on the plaintiffs’ side,” Knowles said.
For a defendant in a class action suit, Knowles said that party is facing a concentration of people.
“It’s kind of like a Death Star aimed at the defendant,” Knowles said.
A class action lawsuit changes a lot of defendants, Knowles said, and potentially could lead to higher judgments and faster time frames.
But a class action lawsuit has its risks as opposed to individual filings.
“You’re taking a smaller risk of a devastating loss,” Knowles said.
Also, the plaintiffs possibly could see smaller pieces of the total judgment because class actions suits require the remedy is dispersed in a uniform way.
With Thursday’s filing being a class action, Mendoza said it’s separate from the other lawsuit filed in federal court.
Knowles said that if cases have similar circumstances, a judge can combine them. Judges have discretion when it comes to joining cases together even if the lawsuits decide not to get class action status. He said if the cases are filed in the same court, a judge can decide how to most efficiently handle the suit.
“These cases could wind up getting consolidated anyway,” Knowles said, even without a formal class action status.
If the cases remain individual, Knowles said they could be resolved quickly or slowly depending on the volume of evidence and the amount of time needed for discovery.
It’s also possible that the first case heard by the court could do all the heavy lifting for subsequent filings, Knowles said.
If a judge applied a legal avenue used when multiple cases have many of the same facts, Knowles said the resolution on the first case would apply to any others that follow.
That has a flip side if the defense should prevail, it automatically would mean the subsequent plaintiffs won’t succeed, Knowles said.
If a judge applies that logic to these cases, Knowles said that can have its pitfalls. The defense could decide to throw all its resources into the first case, knowing that can influence the ruling in subsequent cases, Knowles said.
With separate cases, Knowles said it is possible plaintiffs could see inconsistent judgments based on the differences in the cases.
“That’s another problem class action is intended to avoid,” Knowles said.
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