3 | The Defense Attorney Who Exposed the Truth About Forever Chemicals

You often hear that summer jobs in law school can lay the foundation for your career. Which is kind of terrifying. It creates the impression that your decisions as a 1L can determine the entire course of your life. But here's the truth: your career is not going to be a straight line. Just ask today’s guest, Rob Bilott. Rob started as a defense attorney. But he’s gone on to bring major environmental class actions against chemical companies, and helped expose the truth about toxic "forever chemicals." Rob’s book Exposure chronicles the fight. Hollywood even made a movie about his work.

Suggestions for topics? Questions for our guests? Email the show at Spencer@CauseOfActionPodcast.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A walk-up Melodia Kelly and Schoenberger podcast. I'm Spencer Palkey, and this is Cause of Action. A show about how to build a thriving legal career and practice law that can change the world. As a 1L, I did my research and figured out the plaintiff's firm I wanted to work at. Walk-up. That's what everyone said. That's where I was supposed to go. So I reached out, got an interview, was excited, and got rejected. In fact, I've got the rejection letter framed on my shelf over here as evidence. In my two-lit year, I tried again and wasn't going to take no for an answer. Fortunately, they said yes. And here I am 20 years later at the same firm where I got my start as a summer associate 20 years ago. One thing you're going to hear a lot about on this podcast is how summer jobs in law school can lay the foundation for your career. Now, that's inspiring. I mean, in your summer jobs, you're building real legal skills. You're on the path to becoming an actual lawyer. But also it's kind of terrifying, right? Because it creates the impression that the decisions you make as early as your first semester of law school can end up determining the entire course of your life, the type of law you'll practice, the clients you'll represent, the causes you'll fight for, and generally how you'll spend the next five, ten, twenty years of your life. There's a lot of pressure to get it right. Now, you're going to get a lot of career advice. You're going to hear it from your school, your friends, your parents, maybe even from your new favorite legal podcast. But here's the truth: there's no one way to build a legal career. Everyone's story is unique, and your career is not going to be a straight line. Living proof of that is my guest today, Rob Ballot. Rob started as an environmental lawyer at a prominent defense firm, Taft, Statinius, and Hollister. He spent his days representing large chemical corporations. But that all changed when Rob got a call from a cattle farmer in West Virginia. The man claimed that a nearby chemical plant was poisoning his land and killing his cows. So Rob decided to help out. Despite working as a defense attorney, he brought a plaintiff's case against the chemical giant DuPont. And while initially it seemed like it would be a quick and easy case, the story changed when Rob discovered a cover-up buried in company documents. Rob was able to prove that chemical corporations were polluting the entire planet with toxic PFOS chemicals, also known as forever chemicals. Robb has since gone on to bring major environmental class actions. His work has been central in exposing the truth behind toxic forever chemicals and helping galvanize an international movement. Rob's book, Exposure, Poison Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer's 20-year battle against DuPont chronicles the fight. His story is also featured in the documentary The Devil We Know and the film Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo starring as Rob Ballot. I just found Rob's story so inspiring, and I know you will too. Later, Boston College Law student Marissa Lambert will join me to reflect on Rob's story, and we'll discuss what it's like to go visit clients out in the field. That's all coming up. Rob Balat, welcome to the show. We're glad to have you. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much. Glad to be here. Now, you're most well known for high-stakes class actions against large chemical companies and really for uncovering and spreading awareness about toxic PFAs or forever chemicals that companies have manufactured for many decades, in secret, really, and put into products. But I know before you were suing chemical companies, you were representing them. And I want to start by asking, set the stage for us, what type of law were you practicing throughout the first part of your career?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Yeah, well, I started my legal career in 1990 and started working with the Taft Law firm here in Cincinnati, which is where I'm talking to you from today, actually in Northern Kentucky office. And when I started, a lot of what we were doing was representing big chemical companies, a lot of big corporations. So for the first eight years or so of my career, I was actually working for a lot of big companies, helping them navigate all the complex rules, laws, regulations governing what can go into the air and the water and the soil, basically what uh what was controlling our environment at the time.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

And you do that for about eight years. And at that point you had just made partner at Taft, Statinius, and Hollister. But around the same time, there is a huge change in your career trajectory, which is what I want to zoom in on for a moment. And it starts when you learned about a herd of unhealthy cattle in West Virginia. Can you tell us about that moment and what drew you into looking closer at it?

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Yeah, things kind of, you know, I thought everything was heading in a certain direction at that point. I had been at the firm for eight years. I had uh just gotten married, we're having our first child, and I was becoming a partner at the firm, and I was doing all this work with these big companies. So everything kind of looked on a pretty straightforward path. And then I think it was October of 1998. I went into my office and my phone was ringing, and there was a gentleman almost kind of yelling at me uh through the phone about cows dying on his property. And, you know, at the time that's not what I was doing. I wasn't uh working with cows and had no idea why he was calling me. It turned out he had gotten my name through my grandmother, and he was calling from Parkersburg, West Virginia, which happened to have been my mom's hometown. So I'm hearing this family connection, so at least I started to listen. And listening to that phone call and eventually meeting with that gentleman whose name was Mr. Tennet and his wife, that uh began uh what uh became about almost three decades of litigation into what we now call these PFOS forever chemicals. Um that's how I first got introduced to it, and it really changed the entire trajectory of my career because I began filing claims against a chemical company.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

And before we get into what you're right, I mean three decades of you know all kinds of litigation, it really starts off obviously with that tenant case. And it is so striking to me that you you set the stage so nicely. You're sitting there, your career's looking good. I believe at that point your wife, also a lawyer, but I think she was stopping her practice to take care of kids. And you're on a path, which seems pretty well stepped forward. And then the call comes, what was it that made you say, uh, I will take this a step further and have them come into the office and uh show you the videos and why the next step?

SPEAKER_02 7:07

You know, it's uh it's interesting when you kind of step back and look at this with the hindsight now of almost 30 years. You know, so many things had to just line up just the right way. And the fact when that call came in, at first I was about to hang the phone up. Uh yeah, I had no idea why he was calling me. This was not something I dealt with. And it's when he blurted out, your grandmother told me you'd help. All right. And that's what made me at least pause and listen to him a little longer. And when he explained that that family connection, you know, the fact that he was calling me from Parkersburg and my dad had been in the Air Force, so we moved around a lot, but my mom had grown up there, so family holidays, birthdays, that's where we'd always spent time. And I kind of saw that as my hometown. So when I heard that, you know, your grandmother was was involved in this somehow. That's what sort of opened that door. And I thought, well, you know, I I probably should at least meet with him and at least listen to him. Otherwise, how am I going to explain this to my grandmother? So if there hadn't been that connection, I don't think I would have taken that call. You know, you you just never know where events are going to take you.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Well, let's leave the tenant case and that litigation and the beginning of it. Let's leave that right there because I want to actually rewind and talk about your path uh to law school a little bit. And so what what brought you to law school in the first place and then got you interested in environmental law?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah, it was a little more roundabout. It wasn't maybe the direct path to law school. I had never started out thinking, you know, when I was a kid, gee, I want to be a lawyer, and that's always what I wanted to do, which is the story for my wife. You know, she had grown up always wanting to be a lawyer, and then she knew that's what she wanted to do. Well, for me, I originally thought I wanted to be an architect. And then, you know, when I was in college, I thought, no, I want to be a city planner. In fact, I had applied to grad schools and had been accepted. I was on this path. I was going to go get a master's of public administration and do city planning. And it just so happens that my dad had retired from the Air Force uh while I was in college and had actually decided, you know, he thought he had always wanted to be, and I know this is dating myself and a lot of folks, he had always wanted to be Perry Mason, you know, which was a famous television attorney back in the 1950s. And he thought rather than just do the typical retired Air Force path, you know, working for a defense contractor or something, he thought, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna do something different. So he went to law school while I was in college. And so he was graduating law school about the time I was finishing up college, and he said, you know, you really ought to look into this. Having a law degree could open so many more doors. It yeah, you might not really know what that door is yet, but might be might give you more opportunity. Really? I thought, eh, yeah, I'm not sure about that. And I went and I took the law school admission test and thought, oh, okay, you know, and I ended up going to law school, uh, Ohio State, really not knowing what this whole law field was like, not knowing too much about it, other than, eh, I'll try this out, you know, and uh my dad seems to think it's it's a good opportunity, and he was right.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

And so you go off to Ohio State, and uh there I think you took an interest in the environmental law classes that you took. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah, it was actually the very last year of law school, my third year of law school, and it was the time, at least back then, where you could start taking elective courses, you know, things that weren't required. And I and I remember back then Ohio State had sort of an overview of environmental law, just kind of gave you a feel for what the laws and rules were for what could go out into the environment and how that was controlled. And I really thought it was an interesting class. Um so when I started interviewing for a law job and started talking to different law firms and ended up getting an offer from the Taft Law firm in Cincinnati, I was looking at all the different practice groups they had at the time, and one of them was environmental. Had no clue what that meant or what environmental lawyers did, but I just thought back to that one class in law school and thought, well, you know, that was interesting. Uh let's give it a try. And so based on that and not much else, I jumped into the environmental group in 1990.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Aaron Powell Well, let's talk about how you got that job at Taft. I mean, Taft is a storied firm. It's been around, I think, since the 1880s and associated with President Taft, right? I mean, it is a firm that is a uh quite a pedigree. How did you get the offer and how'd you get the position at Taft?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Well, you know, I was uh interviewing around through law school, and it was one of the firms that I interviewed with, and fortunately uh received an offer from them. Um and I had grown up about an hour north in Dayton. That was one of the military bases, right, Pat, that uh, you know, we had kind of moved in and out of as a kid. So at least I thought, ah, this this will be close to where my parents are. My dad had retired. So it worked out.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

So once you get to Taft, and we already teased at this a little bit, your early practice focuses on regulations and compliance. And that's you know, representing chemical and pharmaceutical companies and helping make sure they're abiding by the law and doing what's required by the books. What is, I mean, I'm a plaintiff's personal injury attorney. I don't really have a sense for that. What did that practice look like?

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Well, it certainly involved a lot of uh learning at that point. You know, uh when I jumped in, I think back in 1990, for example, the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 had just been passed. There was some 800 pages of complex regulations about what was allowed to be emitted into the air and how you get permits. So for a while, I was told I had to master, master all those new amendments and help clients figure out how to get these air permits. And so I was doing that for a while. And then a lot of what we were doing back then also was those were the days we called it super fund litigation, where you had these hazardous waste sites all over the country where chemical companies were fighting over who pays how much to clean up these sites. So when I first joined the firm, a lot of what I started doing was going out to these meetings of lawyers that would occur across the country, where I was representing our chemical company client, and other lawyers would be representing theirs, and they'd all sit in the room and fight over who pays how much to clean these sites up. So, you know, one of the things that process enabled me to do was start to really meet and uh develop relationships with um lawyers for these other companies, including some of these other chemical companies, and to start learning uh and meeting their lawyers and their scientists. And so it was it was a very intense educational process during that eight years.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

At this phase in life for you, in these eight years when you're doing this work and it's super fun cleanups and you're saying trying to divvy up, okay, it's your fault there, it's our fault here, that kind of thing. I got the sense from our research that that was almost, you know, it's a fight, but it's almost more collegial or civil than what you've experienced in your later litigation and how many years it's taken to get accountability. Was it really as sort of, you know, agreeable as it seemed in our research for the interview?

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Um, you know, let's put it this way. A lot of those cases tended not to end up in trials. And there was a lot more negotiation and discussions behind the scene, you know, because typically these were extremely expensive sites and paying the lawyers would cost a lot of money. It was, you know, made more sense to try to work these things out, which was the whole reason behind the way the Superfund statute was crafted to begin with, you know, was to try to encourage people to do just that, to get together and work this out. Um, you know, but a lot of what we were also doing was um pretty intense, at least for me. A lot of what I did was digging into old historic files. You know, uh, for example, an old Mercury site that went back to the 1920s and trying to figure out who sent what waste there. And so I had really started developing the skills of going through lots and lots of files, going through lots of documents, trying to piece together these complicated histories and working through, you know, just an intense amount of data, um, which proved useful in in later years.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Of course, everything changed when you got that call from Mr. Tennant, the cattle rancher, thought his herd was being poisoned by a chemical plant, which of course was operated by DuPont. Now, you not only decided to talk with Mr. Tennant and have him in your office, as you said earlier, you took the case. Now, as we said, you're at a storied corporate-side firm, and I'm wondering how hard it was, I'm dying to know how hard it was to make that decision and convince others who have financial stakes at your firm to let you take a plaintiff's case against not just any company, but a chemical company after your firm had spent, you know, many, many decades working for companies like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Well, you know, it's uh interesting situation because at the time when Mr. Tennant and his wife showed up in our offices back in 1998 and they brought their videotapes and they brought their photographs and you know, I was meeting with them to go over what was happening there at their farm. It just so happened that day that the head of our environmental group, Mr. Turp, uh was walking down the hall and you know, was wondering what's going on in here. And so I had invited him in, and he sat down and watched those videotapes with me and listened to the tenants. And so uh I had him there during this initial meeting where we had to decide whether this was something we were gonna take on or not. And, you know, it was it was clear up front, you know, these these were not our typical clients, and they were not going to be paying our typical hourly rates. And so if this was something we were gonna take on, it was gonna be something we had never done before as a firm, which was a contingency fee, right? Meaning the kind of thing that typically plaintiffs-oriented firms did, where you only get paid if you actually recover. Well, we had never done that before. But looking at this case, I'm thinking, you know, I I chuckle now when I think back on this, but I was thinking at the time, well, this will be a straightforward, quick case. It's a landfill permitted by the state that may be discharging some something bad that's getting into the water these cows are drinking. Well, that's what I do. I help companies like DuPont get permits to run landfills like this. I know that system. There will be permits, there will be records telling you which chemicals are there, and then also they'll be telling you how much are there, because there'll be reports going in every month or quarterly about what's being detected. And it's DuPont on the other side. We weren't representing DuPont. They weren't one of our clients, one of these big chemical companies, but I knew them well. I knew their lawyers because in all these super fund sites, DuPont being this big chemical company, usually they were involved in these sites too. So their lawyers were in the room, their scientists were in the room. So I knew if this was a landfill owned by DuPont, these guys know these rules, they know the science. If it's something, you know, like this obvious that there's something in this phone, we should be able to get to the bottom of that pretty quickly. This will be a quick, easy case. So, you know, spoiler alert for those who don't know this history, we're still litigating right these cases decades later. But at the time, I think that was part of this decision process, that this will be straightforward, it's just a small farm, you know, one family, it shouldn't attract a lot of attention. So that's how we that was part of why we made the decision to at least take that first step. Nobody had any idea at the time that what we would be jumping into would involve a chemical that was all over the country, all over the world, impacting the entire industry.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah, and I guess one step leads to another, leads to too many others. It it's funny. I mean, I I've certainly seen defense lawyer leaves defense firm for plaintiff's firm. They've seen that before, but I can't think of any other example of defense firm leaves the defense situation, which is what happened. And I that part of your story was so fascinating to learn about. I'm just curious, like when you first called up those DuPont lawyers, and you probably had a different expectation about how it would go based on prior dealings, do you remember what their reaction was? Or like, well, wait a minute, what are you are you on the plaintiff's side here? Do they have like some sort of funny reaction to you?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Well, you know, um when we first made the decision to file a formal lawsuit against DuPont for this landfill, you know, I think we were a little hesitant at the time and a little, you know, nervous about what is going to be the reaction here, right? Um and to my surprise, I got a phone call. And um the gentleman on the other iron was very cordial, very friendly. And it would, in fact, it was one of the lawyers that I knew, you know, from these Superfund uh cases that I had been working on across the country. He was one of the DuPont attorneys that I knew, and you know, everything was very cordial and professional. And oh no, we'll work with you, we'll help you get to the bottom of this. And the initial response was not very um tense. But it was once I started to suspect, wait a minute, maybe there's something here beyond what the company's been telling me. Maybe there's some other chemical going. When I started asking them for documents about this chemical that, you know, we've we found out later they had been covering up for decades. Well, then the the response changed. The more I started to dig in, and the more I uncovered. And phone calls started going into my boss, you know, that I needed to back off, and there was concern, you know, about how this was going to be handled.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, because I guess at first they were, you know, oh, sure, we'll send out some scientists and we'll work with uh what, the West Virginia EPA. And they basically create a report that blames your client for not knowing how to raise their own cattle or something, I think. Right. That's kind of the original. Then you dig further and you you got it, you know, I just I can't imagine how significant the motion practice was, but you get an order to get a lot of documents from them. And is that when the tide sort of turns and they're like, wait a minute, this is a bit of a problem for us, and their way of dealing with you changes?

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yeah, it was at the point where we started asking for these documents, um, you know, which eventually did require us to go into court to get orders, and that's when the response started to change. Oh, no, no, no, this is fishing expedition, this is out of control. And um, you know, we had to fight it through uh and and get orders to have this information turned over.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Now, this information is, and you've talked about it. Before being, you know, it's not like it was just a bunch of emails and like uh files on a computer. This is like hard copy documents. And one thing I love about our practice on the plaintiff side is the investigative work that we do and sort of dive headlong into whatever the whatever the problem is. Talk us through what you did once you got those documents and what you learned.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

You have to think about the the timing here. When this case first started, we were in the late 1990s. And a lot of the way discovery was handled back then was still paper. We still had hard copy files. And when you asked for production of documents, you typically got boxes of paper set your way, or you were told to come review the actual hard copy files at the client. It was it was really sort of before everybody started shifting over to computers and servers and emails. And we saw that happen during the life of this case. And we saw how that really dramatically affected, frankly, the ability to get documents. But when I started to be able to get these hard copy documents and actually look through them myself and piece them together, that's how I figured out there was this mystery chemical that at when I started the process, I had no idea what it was called. I had no idea that they used four or five different names for that chemical and that there would be different names for it in these different documents. It was only by getting all of those paper records and looking at them in chronological form that I could see all of that. Well, nowadays, if I went and started that case today for Mr. Tennant, I would most likely have to sit down with the folks at DuPont, and we would have to, before I could see any of their documents, I would have to sit down and come up with an agreed list of computer search terms. All right. In other words, they wouldn't turn over all their files like they used to. All right. They I would have to tell them which ones to search for. Now think about that. In a case like this, I had no idea that there was, first of all, even a mystery chemical, let alone what names they used for the chemical. I would never have gotten these documents. Yes, it took a long time to go through those documents and piece all that together, but that was critically important. That was the only way we were able to see this and piece it together. Now you almost have to already know what you're looking for before you can look for it. And I don't know how I would have been able to find these documents if we'd started today.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I couldn't agree more. Like in our auto products cases, when the burden is somehow on us to describe, you know, specifically what the documentation is of the defect, when like they're the ones we know the outcome, we know the circumstances, but it's their documents and their ways of phrasing it. It's very frustrating. But what you did discover was these PFAs and the precursors to it and has a variety of names, that kind of thing. But it's funny because it's terrible, because whereas it was hidden for decades, it's also ubiquitous. So tell us about these chemicals that you found and how common they are in our environment now.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Yeah, what we eventually discovered was there was a chemical in the water coming out of this landfill next to Mr. Tennant's property, uh, yeah, that was getting into the water his cows were drinking. That same chemical was not only getting into the cow's water, but was likely getting into water all over the planet, was getting into the blood of humans all over the planet, and uh was likely being used in all kinds of products. In the situation we uncovered in West Virginia for Mr. Tennant, it ended up the chemical was coming from DuPont's Teflon manufacturing facility in West Virginia. Uh well, what we came to learn was that chemical, which we called PFOA or C8, was not only used in Teflon, but that chemical and sister chemicals like PFOS have been used in all kinds of consumer products, everything that's stain resistant, waterproof, grease resistant. So things like Scotchguard, Teflon, fast food wrappers and packaging, clothing, carpeting, computer chips, firefighting foams, all kinds of products since the 1950s and all over the world. And unfortunately, when these chemicals are used, particularly in the manufacturing process, they get up into the air, they get into the water from the factories, they get into the ground from landfills and waste disposal. And when they get out there, they don't break down under natural conditions, which is why we all talk about them as forever chemicals now. So what we started to piece together when we were going through these internal records is not only were we dealing with something contaminating cows in West Virginia and the entire surrounding communities drinking water, but we started to see records indicating that the company making the chemical, 3M, and the company they were selling it to, DuPont, that these guys knew this stuff wasn't only getting into the water out there. This stuff was getting into everyone's blood across the country. They had known that since the 70s and that the stuff was toxic. They'd done all these animal studies. So it became a pretty concerning thing to see this as we're piecing it together and start to really understand we were dealing with a global human health threat and threat to the environment that had been covered up and that essentially nobody knew about outside of these companies. The government had been misled, the scientists didn't know about it, the public certainly didn't know about it. So it was very stressful to have that information and not be able to get it out. It took a long time to get that information out to the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

And these ubiquitous forever chemicals, what are they associated with in terms of what they probably cause?

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Yeah, well, the ones we we really know the most about, the ones I've been mentioning here, PFOA, used in things like Teflon, PFOS, which was used in things like Scotchguard and firefighting foams. Well, the one these are these chemicals that have eight carbons attached to fluorine, C8s, completely man-made, all right? Never existed on planet Earth prior to the 1940s. Well, these chemicals, when they get out there, again, the man-made chemical structure makes them very strong so that they don't break down in the environment. But when they get into living things, they've been shown to have some really toxic properties. All kinds of animal studies, and in later years, a lot of human studies have been done that show these chemicals impact our immune system. They may even decrease the effectiveness of vaccines. And there have been studies that have now confirmed links between drinking this stuff and things like kidney cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, and again, this newer data showing immune system impact. So it's really, uh unfortunately, pretty strong scientific data that is now raising alarm bells all over the world, which is why we're now seeing regulators and lawmakers trying to take steps to phase these chemicals out and to, at a minimum, make sure there isn't any in our drinking water going forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

So what you're talking about is the fruits of years and years of labor on the part of you and other lawyers. I mean, these discoveries didn't just come out of the blue, and industry surely didn't provide them for many decades, even though it had them on hand dating back, I think, to the 60s. They knew this stuff was was dangerous and bad. So let's talk about the litigation a little bit. First of all, maybe a quicker question. How did the tenant litigation resolve?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

We eventually settled Mr. Tennant's case for Mr. Tennant and his family. That was a confidential settlement back in 2001. But after we settled that, Mr. Tennet still wasn't happy knowing that we had by that point found out this stuff wasn't just in his water and the cow's water, it was in the entire surrounding communities. So he wanted to make sure we were we had found a way to get that information out. So eventually I sent a letter in 2001 notifying the US EPA, every government agency I could think of. And that led to the community finding out and to further litigation.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

You say casually, like it's uh just a simple letter. Just give us a sense of this letter that you sent and what it took to write it.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Aaron Powell Uh it took a little bit of time. I spent a lot of time going through all these internal DuPont studies, and I put together a letter where I tried to attach a lot of these internal documents. Keep in mind, these were non-confidential. You know, the company could have stamped things confidential under a protective order if it was the trade secret to how do you make Teflon or anything like that. Well, these were these were scientific studies, right? Rat studies, human health studies. So I'm attaching that information to try to help the USCPA and these other government agencies realize this is a really toxic material that's getting out into the water, probably all over the place that you weren't told about.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

And then you started filing other cases, including a class action, which led to, as you said, a years-long study process, perhaps it felt like too long at the time, study process to try to find the probable links between PFAWs and the diseases that they cause. Just give us a sense of the litigation that you've done these past years since Tenet. I mean, it could take a long time, but give us the overview. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Right. Uh well, you know, after we settled Mr. Tenant's case and I sent that letter out to the government agencies, well, by getting that letter out there, the community finally found out, you know, that this is in the water. So that led to folks approaching us saying, hey, you know, help us get this out of the water and tell us how do we get the studies done to tell us what this will do to us. And so that's what led to what became a class action that was filed in 2001 for the entire surrounding community. And uh we litigated that for several years in West Virginia State Court, and eventually that settled in 2004, which led to everybody getting clean water, and it led to this process we were discussing of setting up this independent panel of scientists that to do the studies and do the science to confirm what the chemical could actually do to people. That took another seven years. And so once that process was done and these links were confirmed, that allowed everybody in the community to move forward with individual injury claims against DuPont for those diseases. Well, there were thousands of those. So that led to those cases being pulled into multi-district litigation and federal court in Columbus. And we went through trials, and eventually those were settled beginning in 2017, an additional settlement. So we've reached about 850 million in settlements for that community. Well, in the meantime, the world has realized: hey, that chemical and this sister chemical, they aren't just in the water in West Virginia. This stuff's all over. So that's led to a whole new wave of litigation that really began around 2018, particularly when people realized these chemicals were in one product in particular, firefighting foam that was used to put out petroleum fires all over the country, you know, airports, fire stations. So how do you use it? Spray it on the ground. And so you ended up with this contamination all over the country, all over the world. So as testing finally began, as the EPA started to get involved and started setting drinking water standards, well, suddenly then this was stuff started being found in drinking water all over the country. That led to this whole new wave of cases. Hundreds of cities bringing claims, and thousands of more individuals, firefighters, military personnel all over the country, people drinking this in their water. Now it's all over. So thousands and thousands of cases. All of those that were related to firefighting foam contamination got pulled into a new multidistrict litigation in South Carolina. Those cases are moving through the process. We took the water system cases first, and right before we were about to take one of those to trial, we reached the biggest settlements in U.S. history for public water systems. Over 14 billion, you know, that we've been recovered for water systems nationwide. But those cases continued to move. The state claims are moving forward. We just settled the case for the state of Ohio, settled another case for the state of New Jersey. So long way of saying the litigation has continued and expanded nationwide. And now we're seeing similar claims popping up internationally and other places where this has gotten into the water and into people's blood.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Now, your work has helped spur some big policy changes on top of the resolutions in those cases. Can you tell us a little bit about the policy changes?

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yeah, you know, as this litigation was unfolding for a long time, frankly, no one was really paying much attention to it. You know, it was perceived as, uh, there's just this issue going on in West Virginia that involves something to do with cows. And nobody was really paying much attention until an article came out in the New York Times magazine in 2016 that laid this story out and pointed out, hey, this stuff is being found in water systems across the country. And one of the people that read that was Mark Ruffalo, you know, the Hulk. Right. Right. And he read it and said, hey, you know, how is this happening and why is nobody talking about this? And, you know, how do we bring more attention? He had the idea to do a feature film. And other folks called about doing documentaries and a book and, you know, had to help bring the story to a wider audience. And fortunately, we were able to do that beginning in 2018. The first documentary, The Devil We Know, came out. In 2019, my book Exposure followed right down the heels with the movie Dark Waters. When those films and the book and all that came out, that really started to raise the public's awareness for the first time. Suddenly, people started demanding that the lawmakers do something. And for the first time, when you had A-list Hollywood folks involved and talking about it, the regulators began paying attention. And the lawmakers began paying attention. So what we saw happen after these films rolled out and the public got engaged is finally the lawmakers and the regulators started to look at it and say, whoa, you know, we need to do something about it. We need to start adopting laws. And now we're seeing laws and regulations being adopted, not just here in the United States. And even in the EU, they're now trying to propose entire phase-outs or bands of these chemicals throughout the entire EU. So a lot of progress has been made. It took us a long time. But as a lawyer, you think, oh, I'm supposed to stay in my lane and do these things in court. And it took me a long time to realize, no, you know, you can step out of that lane and help represent these folks and help advocate in different ways too. And I wish I had known earlier, you know, the power of involving storytellers, screenwriters, uh, you know, folks like that to help get the message out about these public health threats. Um, because that's really, I think, was critical to getting policy changes.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

What you've accomplished is the kind of thing that somebody would dream about at the beginning of their law school career. And that's what that's one reason we wanted to have you on the show was that our show is geared toward law students to help them find their path, and especially if that path is going to include work on the plaintiff's side. So I'm curious, what advice would you have for students today who are trying to figure out what kind of law practice they want to have, and especially if they're interested in work like what you do?

SPEAKER_02 38:14

When I talk to folks at law schools, for example, I try to encourage folks to realize when you get your law degree, you know, that is an incredible opportunity. And you need to be willing to keep your eyes open and take opportunities as they arise. You know, as lawyers, we have the ability, of course, to help enforce the laws and help people move through the legal system, but we also have the ability to help change those laws or change the system if we see it's not working the way it should. You know, just because things have always been done this way, or just because you're at a law firm that's only supposed to do these types of things, that doesn't mean it always has to be that way. You need to take these risks. You know, when you see something pop up that provides an opportunity, just because it's always been done this way doesn't mean you have to keep doing that. And, you know, I just encourage, you know, young lawyers that you never know where those opportunities may come up. You know, I'm still at the Taft Law firm, 35, almost 36 years later. And, you know, I I push back on this idea that there are plaintiffs' firms and defense firms. You know, we have clients. And sometimes those clients have claims, sometimes they're defending claims. And uh, you know, you shouldn't have to be pegged or or or told you only can work on one side or the other. And one of the reasons I think our law firm wanted to participate in the film, for example, Dark Waters, was to help show others in the legal community, you know, you can do this too. You don't have to always say, no, we only do it this way, uh, you know, that you can do both.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

You've had multiple times in your career where you have done something that uh was, as you're just saying, against the grain, not expected, not the way it's been done. I mean, I think it's valuable for all of us, whether it's a law student or practicing lawyer, to know that you probably felt some uncertainty and you're probably afraid and concerned, but you hung in there. Is there some little bit of that you can share with us?

SPEAKER_02 40:20

One of the things I think that kept me motivated and kept me going was in the back of my head, I kept hearing the voice of Mr. Tennett who would say, you know, if people could just see these facts, and if they just see this themselves, they'll get it. They'll understand what needs to be done. People will do the right thing. And um, you know, I believed that. And I think as a lawyer, I kept thinking, well, if I can just find a way to get this story out and help people see what I've seen, certainly they'll react and they'll do what needs to be done to fix this. Because it's so obvious and it's so clear. Uh, it took a lot longer than any of us ever dreamed it would take. But eventually it did.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Now we get a lot of questions from law students, and so we've chosen one to tackle with you, if you're all right with that.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

All right. Uh, this comes from one of our listeners who's a 2L, and it's maybe something that you've thought about. The listener writes, I'm really interested in class actions, but I'm worried that I'm going to get bored working on the same case for like 15 years. How do you stay motivated when cases drag on for so long?

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Well, you know, it's uh it it's always something new every day, you know, even in one case that may drag on for years. There's so many different aspects, you know, of a case like that. Um, from uncovering and discovering the facts of what's going on to learning about the science, you know, or to to uh you know dealing with things in court or with the clients, you know, working with the clients. There's there's never really a dull moment. Um and I would encourage people, you know, that this is a I think a tremendous area to get involved in. Um I love talking with law students. I've got two uh two of my three sons uh that have taken on the law career. One of them just graduated from law school, and one of them is in his second year. He's at 2L right now. So uh dealing with these same issues.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Well, before we let you go, there's a final question we ask all of our guests, and that's if you could go back in time to law school and talk to yourself at that time, what would you say to yourself about the journey ahead?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

You know, that keep my eyes open and be much more willing to take that risk, step outside the box and and do things differently. Um, you know, I was hesitant to do some of these things and to deviate from what I thought, you know, you were supposed to do in the way it was supposed to be done. I just wish I had been able to do that and you know, convince myself to do it a lot sooner.

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Well, Rob, it's been an absolute pleasure getting to speak with you today. Thank you so much for joining and chatting with us.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Thank you. It was great talking with you.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

That was my conversation with environmental lawyer Rob Ballot. And now I'm joined by Marissa Lambert. Marissa, I gotta tell you, learning about Rob's story, I think it would be absolutely crazy and also terrifying, but amazing, if someone were to make a movie about my life. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 43:34

I know. I was thinking about whether I would want that or absolutely hate that. I think I would want that. It would be pretty flattering, but I'd be pretty scared about how it would turn out. But you know, in Rob's case, I would be like, uh, yeah, I trust Mark Ruffalo. Do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

It's Mark Ruffalo.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yeah, exactly. I'm in good hands with Mark Ruffalo.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

It's interesting, right? Because Rob is there, he's trying to win in the courtroom, he's trying to win outside. The courtroom, like this, matters to him, and he's just trying to use all the tools available, you know, like advocacy through a movie.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Right. Well, I started thinking about how many movies there are about individual attorneys in these cases. They're incredibly compelling stories. I watched Worth with Michael Keaton over Christmas break. Yeah, and he plays the lawyer who during 9-11 or in the aftermath of 9-11 essentially had to calculate the payout for these families.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

And yeah, right. And you know, every family member has a different view of what, you know, their loved one was quote unquote worth. And how do you even decide that? And Michael Keaton's just in this impossible situation. But I think they make so many movies about this kind of thing because it's it's really intriguing. And I I love that plaintiff's law, in a way, kind of goes hand in hand with the entertainment industry because there's so many stories there, so many stories to be told.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

You're right. And it like the stories that the plaintiff's lawyer is trying to tell, by and large, are pretty compelling. You know, it's you know, David versus Goliath and that kind of thing. And surprise, surprise, those are also good stories to put on screen, you know.

SPEAKER_00 45:15

And also reminded me the power of celebrity and media, and how Rob was saying this didn't really get into the public eye until 2018, 2019, you know, 20 plus years after he started this litigation. And that felt like a track for me because I remember first becoming aware of whether my pots and pans were, you know, gonna give me cancer and whether they had Teflon or whatever. And I don't know, I'm a big cook. That's kind of been a huge part of my life in finding pots and pans and cooking utensils and everything that's not toxic that I'm using every single day, multiple times a day.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

It's terrifying. As I was talking about that, I was like, I remember times where like I'm in college or whatever, and we got these crappy pans, and you can like see this like Teflon, whatever horrible chemical coming off the damn pan. You know, I'm like, upon reflection, I'm like, oh, that is really bad, you know.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

I was feeling extremely grateful for Rob and also extremely grateful that you know, someone like Mark Ruffalo saw that story in the New York Times and that the the industry believed in him and in wanting to tell this story.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

Yeah. It's so cool how what he has done, what both of them have done, what so many have done, have had this rather direct effect on my life. Like call it small, call it large. The pans in my life are a lot safer, you know? And they're like like it actually changes things. Didn't realize how it came about.

SPEAKER_00 46:43

Yeah. And another interesting story as it happens of people just falling into plaintiff's law. You know, that they don't leave law school going to a plaintiff's firm or think that's going to be their path, or actually on the I mean, he was on the complete opposite path, defending chemical companies. And I think that's a testament to the power of how engrossing plaintiff's law can be, you know, if if you never even had an interest in it and then suddenly it's what you've dedicated your life to once someone knocks on your door. It's really powerful.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

And and and it was just interesting, you're right about like it just yet another example of all the routes to plaintiff side practice. Like you, if you talk to Rob a lot when he graduates law school and say, Hey Rob, you gonna be a plaintiff solar? He'd be like, No, what are you talking about? Yeah, it took eight years, you know.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

It made me also really think about the technology difference when he was talking about how, you know, back in the 90s you just had access to all of the evidence and documents, and now you have to come up with an agreed upon, you know, search list, and you wouldn't even know what terms to be asking for because you don't even know what you're looking for. That that makes me really scared. But is that something that you face often in your career, like looking for things but not knowing what you're looking for?

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Absolutely. Absolutely, like especially in auto products cases. I mean, you you you have huge fights about what's going to be produced, and you know, you get jerked around a ton because, you know, you ask for a lot of documents because you don't really know exactly what the way the documents are stored and exactly what they call them and all this stuff, you know, and they produce like some sliver of what you think they should produce. And then they, you know, you go to the judge and then then they sort of you know say the judge, oh Judge so complicated, and it would take us, you know, 1,400 man hours, person hours to do this and be impossible, and we'd have to stop production and the world would, you know, stop spinning.

SPEAKER_00 48:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

You know, just like it's so it's really hard because they they have not only the documents, but they also have the knowledge about the documents, how they're stored, how they could be searched, and what the challenges for that would be. And, you know, got a busy judge, and the judge like throw their hands up in the air and say, you know, I'll give you a fraction of what you want, plaintiff. So it's a major, major challenge.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Aaron Powell I've been thinking a little more about the day today of being a plaintiff's attorney. I was just at our clinic fair and I was speaking to people at the uh just speaking to some students in one of the clinics, and they were saying how, you know, multiple times a week they're driving an hour and a half outside of Boston to go knock on someone's door and ask if they know anything about XYZ, and sometimes they don't answer and they've driven all the way for nothing. And I know that there's travel involved in plaintiff's law, but that kind of scares me. It feels you know vulnerable just driving somewhere and and showing up, even if they are expecting you. Uh, it's very different from you know, five days in the office, which is what you'd find at most law firms. Can you give me an idea of what that looks like? Because I'm thinking it's not as intimidating as it probably sounds in my head right now.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yeah, I mean, that's definitely part of it, right? So, I mean, these days it's funny. You tend to first meet your clients now on Zoom or by the phone, and and the case will start. You'll sign up a case that way these days since the pandemic. Completely different than that before the pandemic. You'd always meet in person. So I find I'm usually going my clients home for the first time pretty late in the case. I always do like to make a visit, and it's oftentimes for purposes of doing interviews as part of a documentary that I like to do for you know settlement purposes to describe and show what this family has gone through. But I've been everywhere, I've done this in multiple countries with different clients, I've done it everywhere all over the United States. I've been to backwaters and big cities, and it is so interesting. The word I would say is interesting, of course. I'm a I'm a guy, you know, I'm not like I have different indexes of concerns, uh, unfortunately, when I go visit, you know, random places. But it is always so eye-opening that when injuries come calling for people, they don't care what your demographics are, what your earnings are, and that's it happens to anybody, anywhere, anytime. And it's such a great source of richness in my life to meet people where they are, literally where they are, and see what their life is like, you know. So I view that as a really positive thing, but there's way less of it now than before the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Interesting. I don't know if that's better or worse for the profession to be meeting people over Zoom.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

I'm also very curious about the documentary type thing you mentioned. I didn't know that was something you could do. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

I love it. In fact, I'm going to India this week.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

No way.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yeah. Yeah. I've got a client who was, you know, sadly injured here on a work trip uh and he and he lives in Bangalore. And so me and one of my law partners and our videographer are going to India for a week to meet him and his family and spend time with him. We've met him in person when he was here, but to see how he is doing now and to document that story. And I'll tell you, I've done like a couple hundred of these documentaries in my career. Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. It is like such an interesting storytelling tool that you wouldn't really, like you say, you wouldn't think about. But my whole goal is to show the defense, like, hey, here's what you're gonna get in trial, this is what it's gonna look like. And it's really fun and interesting, and you're not only just gonna see where they are in their lives, but just to to pretend direct a documentary. I mean, it's not pretend, it's real, you know, it really matters. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

In another life, I would have been in the media. But yeah, when I was listening to the podcast about Rob, I was like, wow, this is so cool that the industry I'm interested in has a lot of intersections with media. And this is another great example of when people probably think of law, they don't think of creativity. But you've carved out this way for you to have some like creative freedom in your job. Being able to connect with your clients, like you said, meet them, where they're at, see what their daily struggles look like for people who have been injured or whose life looks completely different than it did before the event.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

Oh man, there's so much to to talk about here, Marissa. Um, maybe we should do this again, huh?

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Yeah, we'll pick it back up on the next one.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

All right, well, I'll see you, all right.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Bye, Spencer.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Well, that's our show. We'll be taking a quick break, but we'll see you in a couple weeks. If you have any suggestions for topics you want to hear covered, or if you have any questions that you want to hear our guests talk about on air, send us an email. The address is Spencer at causeofactionpodcast.com. Cause of Action is hosted by me, Spencer Palkey, joined by Marissa Lambert. Thanks so much to today's guest, Rob Ballot. Peter Arcuni is our senior producer, and our executive producer is Gabe Ribben for Walka, Melodia, Kelly, and Schoenberger.