More than three months after a tenative settlement was announced, lawyers are still trying to work out detailed documents to spell out the terms of a $151 million deal resolving the class-action lawsuit over the January 2014 Kanawha Valley water crisis.
Lawyers for area residents and businesses, West Virginia American Water Co. and Eastman Chemical met for nearly two hours on Tuesday with U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver "to discuss the progress of finalization of the settlement agreement," according to an entry in the court docket that offered no other details of the closed-door conference.
In a one-page 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 really planned in the case, unless the settlement were to fall apart, and there has been no indication that is likely to happen.
Tentative settlements were reached in late October between the lawyers for hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses and attorneys for West Virginia American Water and Eastman Chemical.
Under the deals, West Virginia American would pay up to $126 million and Eastman up to $25 million to residents, businesses, and workers who were unable to use their tap water during the "do not use" order period that followed the contamination of the region's Elk River water supply by a spill of MCHM and other chemicals from the Freedom Industries facility just 1.5 miles upstream from the water company intake.
Lawyers are now trying to work out the exact language of longer and more detailed settlement documents that must be submitted to Copenhaver for his review and approval and for a public review period that allows members of the plaintiff class to object or opt-out of the deal. More information about how residents and businesses can file claims for compensation will be made public once those formal settlement documents are publicly filed with the court.
Since the tenative settlement was announced, Copenhaver has held at least 10 closed-door meetings with lawyers in the case to discuss the exact language of the settlment documents those lawyers are trying to finalize. Notations listing those meetings are included in the court calendar, and the court docket lists who attended the meetings and how long they lasted, but little other information has been made public about what's occurred during those discussions.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.