Following up on my previous post about this, I did speak with lawyer Robert Weiss last week. He is defending about 100 of the plaintiffs in the Somerville, Texas dioxin case. Just that morning, the defense's own evaluators had found that the Somerville schools had such high dioxin levels that they needed to be shut down.
It's a horrible situation made worse by the fact that Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railroad Company already pleaded guilty to burning the creosote soaked wood. What they are arguing is that the plaintiffs can't prove absolute causality between their cancers and the dioxin released because their cancers could be caused by some other factor. This is always the fall back position in these cases. The full interview can be found here.
Since I spoke with Mr. Weiss, the court has issued a gag order, so that may very well be the last public statement concerning Linda Faust's case against BNSF. Not too surprising, their letter to Warren Buffett, the biggest shareholder in BNSF, did not get any response. More to come once the trial ends or the gag order is lifted...