Lawyers Still Working on Terms of Charleston Water-Crisis Settlement
More than three months after a tentative settlement was announced, lawyers are still trying to work out documents to spell out terms of a $151 million deal resolving a class-action lawsuit over a West Virginia chemical spill that tainted a local water system.
Lawyers for area residents and businesses, West Virginia American Water Co. and Eastman Chemical met for nearly two hours Tuesday with U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported. The purpose was to discuss "the progress of finalization of the settlement agreement," according to a court docket entry that offered no other details of the closed-door conference.
Tentative settlements were reached in late October between lawyers for hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses and attorneys for West Virginia American Water and Eastman Chemical.
In an order made public Thursday, Copenhaver pushed the trial date in the case back from Feb. 7 to March 21. The move is mostly a formality, because no trial is planned in the case, unless the settlement were to fall apart, and there has been no indication that is likely to happen.
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