(AP) - DENVER-Two companies that ran the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant exposed neighbors to plutonium through their negligence, endangering people's health and contaminating their property, a federal jury concluded.
The jury recommended Dow Chemical Co. and the former Rockwell International Corp. be ordered to pay $553.9 million in damages, an amount that is likely to be lowered by the judge but still be in the hundreds of millions.
"This isn't a windfall, this is making up for what these people lost," said Bruce DeBoskey, an attorney who spent 12 years on the case.
Dow said it would appeal.
Defense attorney David Bernick said the judge wrongly allowed some testimony, including claims that the Energy Department was a conspirator. He also questioned a juror's dismissal after deliberations had started and said the jury was allowed to award damages if it determined the companies were responsible for even one atom of plutonium on the plaintiffs' properties.
The lawsuit was filed in 1990 on behalf of 13,000 people, claiming the weapons plant contaminated neighboring land, lowering property values.
The now-defunct plant made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads for decades. The lawsuit claims the companies intentionally mishandled radioactive waste there and then tried to cover it up.
During the four-month trial, attorneys for the landowners presented a study showing higher rates of lung cancer near the plant. Bernick dismissed the cancer claims as "junk science," saying the study didn't indicate how long the patients had lived near Rocky Flats.
Jurors deliberated for 18 days before determining that the damage from the radioactive material might never go away. They concluded the two companies damaged private property around the site through negligence that caused "class members to be exposed to plutonium and (placed) them at some increased risk of health problems."
The verdict calls for punitive damages of $110.8 million against Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical, which operated the plant from the 1950s until 1975; and $89.4 million against Milwaukee-based Rockwell, now known as Rockwell Automation, which ran it from 1975 until the plant was shut down.
The jury also recommended $352 million in actual damages.
The final award is likely to be less because of limits in state and federal law, but it could still reach $352 million after U.S. District Judge John Kane reviews the verdict, said Louise Roselle, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs.
The government is expected to cover damages and legal bills because the companies were contractors operating the sprawling Cold War site near Denver on behalf of the Energy Department, attorneys said. A department spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking details.
The Rocky Flats site was closed in 1989, and last year, a contractor declared a 10-year, $7 billion cleanup project complete. Much of the 6,240-acre site will become a wildlife refuge.
Rockwell in 1992 agreed to pay an $18.5 million fine for water quality and other violations at the site. Rockwell admitted it stored hazardous waste without a permit, and that it stored the wastes in containers that leaked, and that its actions caused hazardous waste to wind up in reservoirs that supplied drinking water to nearby cities.
The settlement culminated a lengthy investigation dubbed "Operation Desert Glow" in which FBI agents secretly monitored the discharge of pollutants into streams and the burning of hazardous waste at Rocky Flats.
Federal agents charged in an affidavit unsealed after a 1989 raid that Rockwell and Energy Department officials were aware of environmental violations and sought to conceal them.
