Spokane7
50°
March 17, 2010 in City
Judge denies sick woman’s motion for speedy trial
Deborah Clark, who grew up in northeast Oregon, has late-stage thyroid cancer. Her lawyers hope to fast-track her trial because of the advanced stage of her illness.
(Full-size photo)
A judge today denied a sick woman’s motion for an expedited trial in the long-running Hanford “downwinders” lawsuits.
U.S. District Court Judge William F. Nielsen said he sympathized with plaintiff Deborah Clark, who has late-stage thyroid cancer, but felt it wasn’t appropriate to take her case out of sequence.
But Nielsen approved attorney Richard Eymann’s motion to take a “preservation deposition” of Clark’s 87-year-old mother, Betty Hiatt, over defense objections. Hiatt is expected to provide additional information about Clark’s milk diet as a baby and young child.
Hanford dispersed radioactive iodine-131 into the air throughout portions of eastern Oregon and Washington during World War II and the Cold War. The iodine, discharged from a reactor making plutonium for atomic bombs, raised thyroid cancer risks for 16,000 infants and small children who drank milk from cows eating contaminated grass, a government study concluded years later.
Revelations of the emissions triggered lawsuits against the private contractors who operated Hanford, and Clark is one of about 1,600 plaintiffs.
Eymann filed a motion asking for an expedited jury trial within the next five months to resolve Clark’s case before she dies.
While turning down that motion, the judge on Wednesday agreed that Clark’s case should be included among 52 thyroid cancer plaintiffs being selected for mediation this year. The rest of those cases will be chosen by computer at random from sick people represented by three plaintiffs’ attorneys.
In addition, 30 plaintiffs with auto-immune diseases and hypothyroidism have been randomly selected for a new trial next spring before Nielsen.
2 home invasion robberies in Spokane 
D Statler on March 17 at 3:10 p.m.
String it out till they die. I am surprised that the Government doesn’t round up all the downwinders and charge them with a bunch of bogus charges.Then negotiate a plea to drop the down winders case.The Feds could learn a lesson from Spokane County’s prosecutors.That is the way they do it without going to court. Then lie,cheat or coerce evidence to convict innocent people. I truly hope that these victims of Hanford and Spokane’s prosecutors all get their day in court. A fair and just court preferrably. ps. Stay away from Price’s courtroom
MrNatural on March 17 at 3:36 p.m.
How compassionate how considerate as the Judge reply’s “I feel your pain” (BS!). This coldhearted eloquence might well have said “Tough (stuff) wait your turn and if you don’t make it Tough (Stuff) again! And sorry we the courts can’t get up off our respective rumps and expedite this out of human need and kindness…but this is a court and human kindness has no place in our justice…this is Hanford justice, a lengthy attrition mired in minutiae. This way no down winder is alive to see true justice for their suffering…I bet if this judge had sucked down some of the “Green Run” and saw his family waste away from illness he’d be crying foul to the hilltops. ..Who says we have the best legal system on the planet…if this is the best then the others are pure murderous
All my prayers to you Mrs. Clark
PhiltheBibliophil on March 17 at 4:27 p.m.
Like everything else with our Federal Government - the have and will continue to lie their A***s off about what really goes on. We, the People have been Hoodwinked for at least 60 years! It is why the day after Obama assumed the Presidency and he got his “National Security briefing” he looked like death warmed over!
CharlesBillford on March 17 at 4:45 p.m.
Another usurption of our Constitution.
misjustice on March 17 at 7:50 p.m.
Justice delalyed, is justice denied!
spokanecommunistparty on March 18 at 8:25 a.m.
When our government finally implodes like the USSR, who will know how to deal with that huge mess over there. I think its a matter of time, and nutty capitalist judges like this guy are just a symptom of the cancer which has been destroying America since it was founded.