FLINT, MI -- A consulting company is asking a Genesee County circuit court judge to dismiss a lawsuit against it, saying the city and state are the real culprits in allowing the Flint water crisis to happen.
Attorneys for Veolia North America and related companies filed the motion for summary disposition Tuesday, May 28, in response to an amended complaint against it and another water consultant -- Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam -- by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office in April.
The motion is the first time Veolia or LAN has laid out its defense in the case that was originally filed in 2016.
The civil lawsuit claims the consultants recommended changes in Flint’s water treatment that directly triggered the water crisis, costing state taxpayers $350 million to respond to it in the process.
“The reality is that principal responsibility for the crisis lies with the government entities and officials -- including the engineers, scientists and regulators at the state’s environmental agency and the city of Flint’s department of public works -- not the (Veolia) defendants,” the company’s court filing says.
“The state and local officials are the ones who chose not to install corrosion controls in the Flint (water plant), which caused lead to leach out of pipes and into the city’s drinking water,” the motion says. “The complaint against the (Veolia) defendants is a self-serving work of fiction, an attempt to rewrite the facts that so squarely place the blame on government actors.”
Veolia also argues in the 66-page filing that there is no legal basis for the attorney general’s lawsuit and that the company has no legal duty to the public at large -- just its client at the time -- the city of Flint.
The city hired Veolia to help it address problems with high levels of total trihalomethanes in water in January 2015, a job the company describes as a “limited, short-term assignment” that occurred before lead was identified as a problem in the water system.
The company issued an initial report on Feb. 18, 2015, and a final report on March 12, 2015, ending the $40,000 job.
The Attorney General’s Office claimed in its amended lawsuit that problems with corrosion in Flint are “directly traceable to defendant LAN’s and Veolia’s recommendation to change from a sulfate-containing coagulant to a chloride-containing coagulant and their repeated recommendations to dump large quantities of ferric chloride into the city water and reduce alkalinity, thereby increasing the corrosivity of the water."
“We stand by our amended complaint and our position will be outlined in our response,” Dan Olsen, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal.
LAN is expected to file its response to the lawsuit later this week, an attorney representing the company said Wednesday, May 29.
State attorneys filed an amended complaint and demand for jury trial against the companies last month -- an action that came after Attorney General Dana Nessel replaced a private attorney who filed the initial lawsuit on behalf of the state with assistant state attorney generals.
Attorney Noah Hall filed the initial complaint against LAN, Veolia and other related companies in 2016.
Since that time, another attorney involved in a class action has filed a motion to disqualify state attorneys from pursuing the case against LAN and Veolia because of potential conflicts of interest.
Attorney Corey M. Stern of New York-based Levy Konigsberg LLP filed that motion, saying Nessel created a conflict of interest when she replaced Hall with prosecutors from her own office, at least some of whom have also defended state employees accused of water crisis crimes and who have previously minimized damages caused by Flint water.