Gordon A. Stemple, A Law Corporation
Other Toxic Substances
Contaminated water. Radiation. Pesticides. Chemicals at work or in the home.
If you believe you or someone in your family was harmed by exposure to a toxic substance, call Gordon. The consultation is free.
Have you been harmed by toxic substances?
Contaminated water
Air pollution from industrial facilities.
Silica and other toxic dusts on the job.
Chemical fumes.
Buildings that made people sick.
Radiation and fallout.
Pesticides and other chemicals.
The next step is to call.
Gordon will listen carefully and ask questions. Together you will talk in plain language about what happened, what matters most, and what makes sense for your situation.
Location doesn’t close the door
The law and judicial systems of some states are simply more beneficial to people injured by toxic substances than others. Even in California, case outcomes tend to vary from county to county.
Gordon personally takes time to determine which state’s laws and venue may be most favorable for your case. In his view, California is among the better venues in the country for people harmed by toxic substances. In most instances, Gordon has been successful in bringing cases involving out of state clients to the most favorable venues within California.
If you think it’s too late
Don’t assume it’s too late on your own.
Time limits are not the same in every state. The only way to know is to call.
The consultation with Gordon is free.
If you or your family member is 70 or older, or a doctor has said there may be less than six months life expectancy, California courts can fast-track a case: months, not years.
Previous toxic substance cases
1979–1986: Marshall Islands Atomic Testing Litigation Project
We represented nearly 4,000 individual Marshall Islanders with personal injury claims and approximately 13,000 with property-taking claims arising from U.S. nuclear testing program in the South Pacific. The litigation addressed whether Fifth Amendment constitutional protections applied to residents of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Island, then a U.S. protectorate.
1981–1986: Survivors of Rongerik
We represented five U.S. Air Force weathermen exposed to radiation during the 1954 Bravo test, the first hydrogen bomb. They were stationed on Rongelrik Atoll, about 150 miles downwind of the Bravo detonation. These cases exposed dangerous government decisions and a long-standing cover-up that continues to this day.
1981–1986: The Toxic Substance Litigation Group
We litigated against multiple manufacturers of 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP) a chemical originally designed as a nerve agent for use in war, then repurposed for agricultural application after University of Hawaii scientists discovered it sterilized nematodes, small worms that damage crops grown in sandy soils, such as pineapples. The defendant chemical companies claimed Gordon was unreasonably causing our clients to experience emotional distress. The trial court and Court of Appeal agreed. In a landmark unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court disagreed and reversed the prior decisions. To learn more about what the fight was all about, review the unanimous California Supreme Court’s decision in Mitchell v. Superior Court paying particular attention to the final two paragraphs of the opinion referenced below.
“… Such a holding would potentially uphold a harassment tactic whereby defendants such as these are able to shift the focus of the case from the damages caused by chemical pollutants to the damages caused by allegedly inflammatory or false information provided by self-serving attorneys… Once again, this technique not only obfuscates many of the substantive issues in a case, but also frequently places the wrong ‘defendant’ on trial. Quite simply, such tactics should not be tolerated in the courts of this state…” Mitchell v. Superior Court, 37 Cal.3rd 591, at Pages 610, Para 4, L 2 – 4 and 611, L 3 – 5
In short, the chemical company defendants tried to shift responsibility for the harm caused by their own products onto the very lawyers representing the people they harmed.
1984–1993: Crazy Horse landfill — Potter v. Firestone
In the Crazy Horse landfill case, we secured a then-record monetary award for two families whose groundwater was contaminated by toxic waste from the Firestone facility in Prunedale. Because none of the family member plaintiffs had manifested a physical injury, this was a fear-of-cancer case arising from their exposure to the contamination. At the time, it was the highest court verdict in the nation in a landfill contamination case. The California Supreme Court’s later review in Potter v. Firestone, 6 Cal. 4th 965, reduced and remanded the damages, and the matter resolved for an undisclosed amount.
1997–2002: Tobacco Victims Law Center
We collaborated with other law firms to hold the five major cigarette manufacturers responsible for healthcare costs incurred by the Republic of the Marshall Islands in treating smoking-related illnesses among its citizens. The litigation was among the first to require these companies to defend their conduct in a jurisdiction outside the United States or the United Kingdom.
Other Toxic Substance Cases
Over the years, Gordon’s work has also included matters involving chemical exposures and toxic conditions in a variety of settings, representing clients ranging from individuals to groups of hundreds.
A California class action against major mobile and prefabricated housing manufacturers over formaldehyde in laminated wood. Settled. The companies agreed to lower emission levels on housing they would later sell in California.
About 200 people in a northern California suburb exposed to pesticide drift. Many had cancer. Four firms.
Five government fraud investigators in a leased building with toxic mold. Six firms.
One professional woman with debilitating brain damage from a single acute benzene exposure after an HVAC system was cleaned with solvent while it was still running in an occupied government building. Four firms took the file shortly before trial.
