Camp Lejeune Justice Act

"I wish they would have just said, screw you, we're not going to do it. We don't care. Go ahead and die. Stop holding out hope. Stop making us fight. You know, I mean, it's cruel,” Cathy Makely said, “It's so cruel.”

Marvin Cox served in the United States Marine Corps from 1981 to 1985. His last duty station was Camp Lejeune. He has since been diagnosed with cancer.

A status conference for the Camp Lejeune Justice Act cases is scheduled for Friday at the Alton Lennon Federal Building and Courthouse in Wilmington before Magistrate Judge Robert B. Jones Jr.; it starts at 11 a.m.

The evidence from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry uses computer models to reconstruct how and when drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, especially during the 1950s to 1980s when actual water testing was limited.

Seventy-two years after service members were first exposed to toxic water at Camp Lejeune, and three years after the passage of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, litigation over the resulting health impacts remains ongoing, with a new motion filed this week in an attempt to speed things up.

The water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville was contaminated with industrial solvents and benzene, and it’s considered one of the worst cases of water contamination in U.S. history. Nearly one million Marines, sailors, civilian employees, and military family members were potentially exposed, according to the CDC.

Federal lawyers defending the U.S. Government in hundreds of lawsuits connected to decades of contaminated drinking water aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune attempted to halt all deadlines connected to the case until two weeks after the government shutdown ends.