Helping Ensure Efficient Justice for Camp Lejeune Victims Through Increased Transparency

It is no secret to the attorneys representing those who served at Camp Lejeune and their families that this unconscionable environmental and public health disaster has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Americans suffering from incurable, life-altering diseases. After our government fought these veterans for decades to evade accountability, it should also come as no surprise that they are now refusing to release vital medical data – a cancer incidence study – that would be supportive of the legal claims brought by these families. 

After decades of evading accountability, our government continues to fail our nation’s heroes by dragging out the legal process and lacking transparency regarding the information necessary to obtain justice. The horrific costs of this public health disaster cannot be ignored by hiding behind government bureaucracy and red tape. Without increased transparency in this litigation, countless veterans will wait years for a resolution to their claims or miss the opportunity for justice altogether.

Accordingly, SimplyConvert is doing our part to ensure that all key stakeholders – and the American public at-large – has a better understanding of what’s at stake and why justice must be achieved immediately versus years down the road. Through our Camp Lejeune Plaintiff Database, SimplyConvert is in the unique position of providing insight to all stakeholders now. Most importantly, sharing this insight ensures that every Camp Lejeune Plaintiff has the information they need to make an informed decision about resolution as fairly and expeditiously as possible. 

We recently spoke to Bloomberg and shared some of our data-driven insights into what happened at Camp Lejeune and the devastating impact it’s had on thousands of families. With our tech-forward approach and priority on our clients’ and claimants’ confidentiality, we were able to share these insights while keeping the specific details on each claimant (i.e., names, identifying characteristics, their legal representation, etc.) completely anonymized.

Bloomberg’s report, released today, paints a startling picture of the wrath that the toxic water at Camp Lejeune has brought upon our nation.

Key findings:

• Many Camp Lejeune veterans are living on borrowed time given that they are outliving the average age of death for many of the diseases, including bladder cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia, liver cancer, Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, scleroderma, and Parkinson’s disease.

• Many claimants have more than one applicable disease. 41.3% have two or more injuries or diagnoses.

• Only a small percentage of claimants – 13.6% according to our data – qualify for the Elective Option (EO) being offered by the government. The majority of claimants – 65% – with a qualifying injury for the EO cannot file because they do not meet the 35-year latency period.

As I shared in the article,  so many of these claimants are older, are very sick, and likely do not have years to wait for a trial.

That being said, families who want a jury trial absolutely deserve that opportunity, contrary to the claims made by the Washington Legal Foundation. The government should not, after poisoning hundreds of thousands of Americans, also be able to dictate how these victims achieve justice.

As part of SimplyConvert’s commitment to Camp Lejeune veterans and their loved ones, we will continue to use our voice and our data-driven insights to fight for all of those who fought so bravely on behalf of our country. We would encourage all of those in positions of power to prioritize transparency as we move forward in this historic litigation.

For more information on our work related to Camp Lejeune, visit our Camp Lejeune Litigation Resource Center.