Important Deadlines Announced by the Court for Camp Lejeune Claims

On September 26, 2023, Judge Boyle who is overseeing the coordination of the trials for Camp Lejeune claims issued Case Management Order 2 (CMO 2).  In it he set the following important dates. We believe these dates are very fair and will move the claims as quickly as possible while also allowing time for the necessary work.

Cases are broken into three ‘tracks’ which is very common in large, mass suits. Track 1 diseases will be bladder cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma cases. 10 individual plaintiffs will be identified (each with one or more of these Track 1 diseases) and their individual cases will then be prepared during the first half of 2024. Pretrial work for these cases will end in June 2024. We would estimate that the trials may then be set for the fall of 2024 for these 10 cases.   

Simultaneously, five additional diseases which will form the Track 2 cases, and these diseases will be agreed upon in late 2023 or early 2024, with the Track 3 additional diseases being agreed upon in early 2024. We do not believe Track 2 or Track 3 diseases will receive trial dates in 2024 although this is uncertain. It is possible the court could elect to have those tracks move at the same time as the Track 1 cases.

Judge Boyle also ordered that global resolution of all cases be considered while the Track 1 cases are being prepared for trial. Remember that the absolute deadline to file a Camp Lejeune claim is August 9th, 2024. After this date the Navy will know with certainty how many claims have been filed and the number filed for each disease. We believe this would potentially allow ‘real’ settlement discussion to take place sometime after August 9, 2024 when the Navy knows the finite number of claims it must address. However, settlement discussions could certainly begin well before than as it would be an involved process to structure a fair settlement for all claims.