Southern coalfield residents lawsuit against Massey Energy finally gets court date

From Business Week:

Hundreds of southern West Virginia residents who claim Massey Energy Co. poisoned their wells by pumping coal slurry underground will finally get their day in court. A mass litigation panel handling the long-delayed lawsuit against Virginia-based Massey and subsidiary Rawl Sales & Processing has finally set a trial date of Aug. 1, 2011, in Wheeling. A mediation day is set for Nov. 15 in Charleston, when two of the judges will try to broker a settlement that Massey, the plaintiffs and dozens of insurance company lawyers can live with.

This case originated in Mingo County and was set for trial last fall, but the state Supreme Court disqualified the judge who had been handling it over a conflict of interest. The case was then referred to another judge, who asked to be removed. Earlier this year, the court assigned it to the mass litigation panel, judges who specialize in large, complex cases involving hundreds or thousands of plaintiffs.
At Friday's three-hour hearing to get the trial back on track, Mazzone denied more than 100 motions Massey had filed to dismiss cases by plaintiffs who failed to show up last year for a previous attempt at mediation. That keeps the case alive for not only 556 people who say they are already sick or disabled, but also for nearly 200 plaintiffs who want a medical monitoring program to watch for illnesses they believe they could develop.
The current and former residents of Rawl, Lick Creek, Sprigg and Merrimac are suing Massey and Rawl for injecting coal slurry into worked-out mines between 1978 and 1987. Slurry is the wastewater produced when coal is washed to help it burn more efficiently.
Massey has denied any wrongdoing and defended the practice as legal. The lawsuit, however, claims slurry seeped through cracks in the earth into the groundwater, poisoning drinking wells. Residents say decades of exposure to water that often ran orange, red or black caused developmental problems, cancers and other health problems.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has imposed a moratorium on new coal slurry injection sites. Twelve of the 13 currently permitted in West Virginia are active.

Mazzone gave Massey and the plaintiffs until Sept. 1 to hammer out two key evidence issues -- whether Massey Chief Executive Don Blankenship should be compelled to testify and whether the plaintiffs can have access to a company database of environmental violations. If the parties cannot agree, the judges will decide.