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Richard Helppie
Hello, welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your host, Rich Helppie. Our guest today is Mike Cox. Mike Cox is a renowned attorney in the state of Michigan; former Attorney General for the state of Michigan. He has devoted his career and his lifetime to seeking justice; done a great job with that. Today we're going to drill down a little bit on Camp Lejeune and what the heck's going on with the water there. Mike, welcome to The Common Bridge. It's always good to see you.
Mike Cox
Rich, it's great seeing you again. It's been a little while since we've done some hockey games, but it's good talking to you.
Richard Helppie
Indeed, I was down at the Wings last night and they played well, but they just played a better team in the Edmonton Oilers. It's still my passion but we're way overdue. Mike, our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests so if you could run through where did you grow up and what were some of your early experiences and how did you end up in the Attorney General's office?
Mike Cox
Well, I grew up over by Rouge Park on the west side of Detroit, and in Redford, and in a neighborhood like yours Rich, all working class folks. My dad was a carpenter. Everyone had six or seven kids stuck in a 975 foot square house. It was a great American middle class upbringing. At 18 I was a little lost, a little disoriented. I knew I wasn't ready for college and decided to run away and join the Marines. And I'm here to tell it was the best decision ñ the second best decision I ever made after marrying my wife - but it turned my life around, gave me direction. I was what we call a grunt. I was an infantry man. So I ran around with a rifle for three years, traveled the world, had a great time. It really gave me the ability to focus and have discipline. When I went to college - I went to University of Michigan - went there for undergrad [then] law school and from there I became a prosecutor. I was a career prosecutor for 13 years in the city of Detroit and Wayne County. In fact, I've worked for three different bosses. My last boss was the current mayor, Mike Duggan, and I ran all the homicide prosecutions there. Sadly, we had 14 lawyers who...that's all we did all day long was homicide trials. But it was great training to become attorney general eventually. As crazy as it sounds it was a fun and great job; fun in the sense of the camaraderie you have. It was much like being in the Marine Corps again; you kind of feel like you're in the trenches, like when you're building your business, Rich, with your core team. We were out every day doing good. We would generally have people...we would encounter them at the worst times of their lives - family members - right after murder. By the time the trial worked its way out, generally we built relationships and people are in a better spot. So one day in 2000 I just been on court TV, and I got a call from a Republican party official. I had been involved in helping Republicans at that point and they said, you ought to run for attorney general. At the time, it looked like Jennifer Granholm was going to run again but instead she ran for governor. I kind of came out of nowhere. I beat Gary Peters in November 2002 and had a great eight year run, met great people like you. It was just like being in the Marines again, was just like being a homicide prosecutor, was just like the work we're doing now for Marines at Lejeune. It was like team building, esprit de corps, going out there and fighting the good fight every day. I think we did a lot of great things as attorney general, whether it was going after unpaid child support from both errant fathers and mothers, believe it or not, to fighting with Blue Cross for health care rate payers, to fighting with the Federal government over Asian Carp and getting things in place to protect that Great Lakes. So it's been a great ride long before I came to private practice.
Richard Helppie
So this quest for justice and for fair treatment, speaking up for the middle class and the lower economic people, for people that have faced the worst tragedies of losing a loved one to homicide, you've built that over decades now. I understand you've just gotten through a very publicized lawsuit with some other victims. Are you at liberty to mention that at all today?
Mike Cox
Yes. So I think most people in America heard about Larry Nasser and what he did to the gymnasts at Michigan State. Well, unfortunately, at my alma mater during the time that I was there, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, U of M had its own team physician, Dr. Robert Anderson, who was abusing athletes and some non-athletes in the course of medical treatment. It was all happening in the exam room in the guise of medical treatment. I won't go into the horrible details, some of the things he did, but he took advantage of the situation, [it] went on for literally decades, Rich, from the late 60s up to 2000. So I was one of the three lawyers, one of the three lead lawyers, who settled with the University of Michigan for $460 million. One thousand eighty men and women - some women, mostly men - were involved; I personally represented just shy of 200. Rich, that grew out of friendships. When I was there, I cooked for a while at U of M, to support myself and get through undergrad as a cook. Long story short, I met some wrestlers and through them met some guys who played football, kept in touch over the years and when a story came out, kind of an exposÈ in the Detroit News in 2020, about a secret investigation U of M had done into this guy which they hadn't revealed to anyone, it kind of broke this wide open. I feel great about it because, quite frankly, I helped my friends. I met a lot of great guys my age, your age, who had struggled emotionally and mentally - but hid it for all these years - from the abuse of Dr. Anderson. I had a lot of middle aged crying men in my office; it's what I used to do with young kids who were abused sexually. That was 30 years ago, and that was horrible. But I was an adult and here it was adults and it's the same sort of trauma with people my age, trying to put the pieces back together. So the money was important in the sense that it showed that the institution was acknowledging and changing what they were doing. But the most important thing for a lot of these guys was just the fact that you had to come to grips to what it did as an institution. So I count that as one of the great triumphs of my career. It was a three year process, we're almost done. Our clients are assumed to get their damages and it's a good day. I think you have the new president; they're on a better track. I think there's more that needs to be done there but they've made some steps because of our lawsuit. It's ironic that a lawsuit based on what happened 30 years ago is going to help the university kids today, but it's something that my clients should feel proud of and I think all the lawyers involved should feel proud of as well.
Richard Helppie
Anyone that's been a victim of sexual abuse, or know somebody that's been a victim of sexual abuse, no matter what age, it's a permanent stain, it is permanently weakening to the victims. I'm proud to know you and your fight for justice for those victims, which brings us to our topic of the day about Camp Lejeune. What most people understand about Camp Lejeune is they see an ad saying there's an opportunity, if you've lived or worked or been a member of the Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune for a real long period but I think going back to the 1950s, about contaminated drinking water. Maybe we can start at the beginning. What happened with the water and when did they discover it? What are some of the health impacts and how has this come to be an issue today? I mean, it just seems horrible that we've let something go for 70 years.
Mike Cox
Rich, its really stunning to me because one of my duty stations, I was in Camp Lejeune and Okinawa. I went back and forth between Camp Lejeune and Okinawa. I was in the Second Marine Division, which is headquartered in Camp Lejeune. I was a rifleman then in the infantry and I was with a group called the Second Battalion Second Marines which has a proud history in defending our country. I was there in ë82 and ë83 and that was toward the end. Soon after that the Marine Corps and Department of Navy addressed issues that were starting to arise while I was there drinking water. Marines drink a ton of water and it sounds crazy, but it's not like this new thing where you've got to drink a gallon a day, which we all try to do now. When you're out in the field, especially in the training in the hot sun at Camp Lejeune, you're always parched and you're always drinking. Working in the mess hall, if you're a cook, the steam...the contaminants in the water were actually get into your bloodstream quicker. So getting back to your question, what happened? In 1952, 1953, literally, during the end of the Korean War, a couple of things kind of converged. One was there was - a Marine likes to be spit and polished, we like to look sharp in our dress blues when we're not in the field - there was a huge dry cleaning operation on base and it was a 24 hour dry cleaning. If you can imagine it, it was on the corner of Holcomb, right in the middle of the base. Back in that time, like a lot of gas stations and other dry cleaners, they took their fluids and dumped it right in the grass behind them. So it was dry cleaning fluid, dumping of gas from trucks, leaks of oil, the cleansing cleaners that we used to clean our weapons with - that all went in the ground in Camp Lejuene. It was very sandy so the water ran into drinking wells, eight of them, and ultimately ñ excuse me, 100 - and ultimately led to four different kinds of poisons being ingested between at 1952 and 1987. It's created...perhaps the crime of the century is the wrong thing to call it, but perhaps negligence, abuse, gross incompetence of a massive scale that's ultimately reached hundreds of thousands of Marines, sailors, Corpsman, family members for years. I mean, Camp Lejeune always has 30-40,000 active duty Marines, a lot of them are married, a lot of them had young children. And the young children, it was obviously more toxic to them. There was a thing on base called Baby Heaven, Rich, if you think about that...you have young Marines and their wives having children who were dying at rates above the national average and no one ever put it together until the late 80s. They finally addressed it; EPA made it a toxic Superfund site in 1987. And last year, bipartisan Republicans and Democrats decided to do something about it and created the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, so that anyone who spent at least 30 days in Camp Lejeune - whether you're civilian or not - between '52 and '87 is eligible if you have one of a number of presumptive diseases. They range from liver, bladder, Hodgkin's cancers to Parkinson's to infertility to male breast cancer. The information is out there on the web or if anyone wants to call our office or look us up. But anyone who's served who is ailing now, in addition to going to the VA and going through that process, you should also talk to a lawyer to look at a claim because Congress ñ in a bipartisan way, which doesn't happen too often these days, right, your show is about building bridges, crossing bridges, having society work together like we used to, in a bipartisan way - President Biden and the Republicans in the Senate, and Republicans and Democrats in the House passed it because it was so horrendous. Five different government studies have shown that the rates of these diseases are off the charts [between] the American public compared to Marines who are at Camp Pendleton, or over in Okinawa, or Army soldiers who are Fort Bragg. Something about the conduct on the base in terms of the neglect, ignorance about disposal of environmental toxic fluids, but also the groundwater and the particular geography and geology of that part of North Carolina all converged to make for what is this horrendous medical issue that we have today.
Richard Helppie
This is obviously an environmental disaster of massive proportions. If people don't think that environmental laws are as critical to our future, think about this happening in ten places or one hundred placesóyou could severely limit humankind's progress. Mike, my understanding is that this was such a disaster that it really outran the civil justice system because of statutes of limitations, then the Navy had an opportunity to respond, but they didn't and so this is why the act was put into place. Can you take our listeners and our viewers and our readers through that; how this played out through the legal system and if there's any time limit on making a claim today?
Mike Cox
Rich, anyone who is or was in the Marines - we're never out of the Marines, we're always a Marine, we never say ex-Marine, we say we're a former Marine - there is this idea of leave no one behind. The term is esprit de corps; a brotherhood, whether you're a woman Marine, or a male Marine. That was violated here [by] a series of base commanders in the ë70s and ë80s and then by folks up that chain of command, in the Navy Department of Defense, [who] were aware of these problems, really pooh-poohed it and really kind of experimented. People like myself and the guys in my squad, in my platoon, and my company, my battalion, were a little bit of lab rats. Thankfully, nothing has happened to me, but I have friends from that time who have reached out to me and we're representing them. It's hard for me to explain given the Marine ethic - it violates the Marine ethic, what happened here. But that sometimes happens in human behavior. So you're asking, when can you file? Well, if you were in Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days - it just has to be 30 days - during that period from 1952 to 1987, if you were on base for at least 30 days - you could have been a reservist who goes there for two weeks, in the summer, a couple of summers, you could have been temporarily stationed there, you could have been independent, you could have been a civilian employee, any of those things, you have between now and two years from when the bill was signed on August 10 of 2022. So you have until August of 2024. What happens is you retain an attorney who's doing these cases - by statute, by what Congress passed, they give a period of time for the Department of Navy to settle with the victims. There's a six month period after you file a claim, that the Navy can try and settle the case. If not, then it will be filed in federal court in North Carolina. But getting back to the point, it's anyone who served at least 30 days, from 1952 through the end of 1987 - had to be at least 30 days - you have two years to file. Of course, like anything else, you don't want to wait.
Richard Helppie
Exactly. Well, let me play that back. So presume I'm a Marine that served during that time period, say 1975, just to pick a date, and I have Hodgkin's disease. Like firefighters, there are certain conditions that are presumed to be caused by that environment and exposure to those chemicals. So a couple of questions here; first, can I go to just any lawyer that I find on the net and say, hey, I need an attorney to go file this? And then, would the claim be filed with the federal government or with a court?
Mike Cox
Okay, two great questions. There are a lot of good lawyers doing this, including myself, but you want to get someone who's had experience in what are called mass torts, where there are a series of individual cases, victims who have a number of different damages, injuries, who were all hurt by the same actor, like U of M, Michigan State's Nasser, or in this case, the federal government and the Marines and sailors at Camp Lejeune. There are a number of us, in Michigan and across the country; do your due diligence. You can always call our office for information and if we're not the right attorney for you, go somewhere else, but do a little investigation, see if they've done these cases before. Second piece is what happens once you get a lawyer that you're comfortable with, that you feel is going to advocate for your interests and fight hard for you; once you do that, that lawyer will file what's called the administrative claim. That administrative claim is not a full-blown lawsuit at that point. The administrative claim, like I say, Congress set this up, so they're going to give the Navy the first bite at trying to resolve cases early on. You're going to file an administrative claim that will go to the Naval Judge Advocate General Corps - Navy JAGC, for those folks who watch all these shows on CBS and ABC - the Navy JAG Corps, working with Department of Justice gets the first bite to try and resolve it. If it can't be resolved, there's a six month period, then your lawyer can file a case in federal court in the Eastern District of North Carolina. A couple of things on timing Rich, this takes a while to get your case started. For instance, one of my very first guys that we signed up, served in '67-'69, got drafted. Fortunately, for him, only spent a month in Vietnam and then was sent to Japan, and was a truck driver. Then he ended up back for seven months in Camp Lejeune in '72 or '73. He's had different health issues, some of them arguably related to Camp Lejeune. We had to get medical records; it takes quite a while to get medical records. A lot of guys our age can't always remember everywhere we went so it takes a little bit of a time. That's the biggest part. Generally what we do is we get the medical records and we have staff nurses who look at them, and then we'll get an expert opinion from MDs, oncologists, and then we'll file a claim. That's the best practice that takes some time. So we tell these Marines look, this problem was 50 years in the making, you've got to give us a little time. But we're going to get it done for you and help you cross the line and help yourself or your family. [If] something happens to you, God forbid, because a lot of my folks are end stage for cancer - liver and bladder cancer - and they're doing it for their family. I should let people know, in the regular civil world, if you or if I were killed in a car accident on Washtenaw, or I-75, or I-94, here in Michigan (Rich Helppie: All likely locations for that too.) Yes, and so if we met that unfortunate event, our families could file a wrongful death lawsuit if someone was at fault. In the same way, if your father or your brother or your uncle or your sibling was at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 days and had one of the illnesses that are presumptive, you can file a wrongful death lawsuit. That's a proper, appropriate...that's the way its been in English law for six, seven hundred years now, since the Middle Ages. So it's not just for folks like me who might develop an injury or illness, it can also be if you had a loved one who died as a result of an illness that arose because their time at Camp Lejeune.
Richard Helppie
Would that wrongful death also first filed as an administrative claim with the Navy JAGC? (Mike Cox: Yeah.) So it seems to me that filing an administrative claim with the Navy JAGC is a special skill. I don't know very many lawyers that have actually had that experience. Would that be something someone should look for in an attorney?
Mike Cox
Absolutely. I can't say it can't be learned Rich, but you want someone who's had experience dealing with big institutions or had experience with the military.
Richard Helppie
Absolutely. Any bureaucracy, navigating the bureaucracy is a skill set. So Mike, my understanding now, the way you've described it, is if there's an injured Marine or family member the first step in the process is there's an administrative claim with the Navy's legal arm, so to speak. Is the Navy settling any of these suits in that administrative process?
Mike Cox
Not yet, Rich. I anticipate it will happen. I should mention this because it comes up a lot when people call our office; the fact that you're getting VA benefits doesn't preclude you from filing a lawsuit. And Congress, when they signed the bill, it says that in there. Sometimes other vets tell their friends no, you can't do both. You absolutely can and we'll explain that process, so that's important to keep in mind. Is the Navy settling cases yet? Not yet. As you can imagine, this all passed at the end of August '22, just four months ago. And quite frankly, the Navy, they had some advance notice because it worked its way through Congress but they have to set up their own bureaucracy that they're hiring. I've heard the Department of Justice hired over one hundred new lawyers to help the Navy JAGC processes because there are already tens of thousands of claims filed. It's going to be an evolving process, a hard process, hard fought, especially for the more serious cases and people need a little patience. But it's one of these times where, in a bipartisan way, the Congress and the president agreed to try and rectify a grave wrong. If you've been wronged, you should enter the process and check it out.
Richard Helppie
Well, Mike, not to be overly pessimistic about it but I'm trying to do the time line on this. Presume I am an early Vietnam or late Korean War veteran and I have been exposed and I'm ill. I might be in my mid 70s to my early 80s. Now I have to gather all the medical records, build a case, there's a period of months, then the administrative claim is filed, and the Navy gets a period of time to try to settle that. Then I have to get in line behind perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in a federal case in the Eastern District of North Carolina; I'm going to be dead before I get my day in court. It just seems like it's going to overwhelm that court in North Carolina, and these are all going to get adjudicated, individually, hundreds of thousands of cases.
Mike Cox
Yes, a couple of things. You bring up some great points. My dad immigrated to the United States and at 49 he got drafted right away. He didn't go in the Marines, he went in the Army. He fought in Korea and got out in '52 right when these problems started. My dad's going to be 95 next month, so at the high end there are people as old as 90, 91, 92 from the early 1950s. The low one, it goes down. So I'm 61. If you were there in 1987, and you were 18, [now] you're 53 or 54. So the band is ages 53, 54 up to like 90, so you're right, the process will take some time to work its way out. But a couple observations. Someone who was in the Marines, itís let's hurry up and wait. That's what we got used to, you wait in line a lot to get the right thing done. Like I said, the way some of my older clients think about it - I have clients in their 80s, some in very poor health, some good health - their view is, when I'm buried, I'm going to have a Marine Corps detachment there to give me a 21 gun salute, that's part of my service as a Marine and my family is going to be part of that and the Marine Corps is going to honor my service. By my filing a claim, if it comes to my family after I'm gone, that will be another recognition by my government of my service and what horrible thing happened to me from my own government during my service, and my family will not only enjoy the lessons I learned as a Marine, but perhaps it is a recognizable award to my family members after me. Again, not everyone has that mindset, but as Marines they live their lives not about themselves; they joined the Marines because they want to serve someone other than themselves, or they want to be part of a bigger cause. So for a lot of my older Marines, its like, I want to register what happened to me for the other Marines I served with, for my family, and for our community, and our country so this kind of thing doesn't happen again. A lot of them view this as just another way to serve once again.
Richard Helppie
Mike, I love the way you put that. I'm thinking about this 34 year period from 1953 to 1987, or was it a 35 year period from 1952 to 1987?
Mike Cox
Yes, '52 to '87.
Richard Helppie
Is there any defense that said, in 1955 we didn't know that putting dry cleaning compounds into the soil was a bad thing, or does that liability last no matter what under environmental law?
Mike Cox
Well, under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act of 2022, which was part passed as part of the burn pit legislation last year to help protect primarily Iraq veterans like my daughter, who is a corporal over in Volusia, the federal government admitted liability. So it's that they say we have no defense, at least for the 14 presumptive diseases. There are other diseases that I and other lawyers are funding research on that may ultimately end up in a settlement but the federal government gave up liability on the presumptive diseases so there is no defense on that; it's really a matter of damages at that point.
Richard Helppie
As you said, at the front end of this process, if your medical records say you have one of these presumptive diseases, there is basically an acknowledgment by the federal government that they did cause that, then how do they calculate the damages? And does it differ from individual to individual?
Mike Cox
It will differ from individual to individual. For instance, right now I'm working in an office and hopefully, there's not any toxic exposure I'm getting right now. But my dad was a carpenter and then later worked at Ford. So he was in plants, he was in docks and so in his life he developed asbestosis in certain work settings. He's fine, but my point being, the federal government, their lawyers will say, well, let's look at your work life to see if there are other contributing causes; that may impact some of the damages. But that's why you need the right lawyer to fight for you and present the counter argument. But again, there's no money out of pocket, even if you're getting VA benefits. If nothing else, peace of mind, it makes sense to investigate.
Richard Helppie
Great, and you have a website.
Mike Cox
It's really simple. It's just MikeCoxLaw.com or just put my name on the internet and it'll pop up.
Richard Helppie
I know that you know there are other great attorneys out there that are doing this work. Mike, I think that you've been so generous with your time explaining to our readers, listeners and viewers the importance of this because some people say, I'm getting annoyed by the Camp Lejeune ads. I did a show a while back called “Thank God Campaign Season's Over” because of the incessant ads and somebody commented, now if we can get rid of the Camp Lejeune ads. But this is a real issue affecting real people and there's a real solution out there. We need to get the word out and I think this program will do it. As we move to our close today is there anything that we didn't cover or any closing comments you'd like to share with our audience?
Mike Cox
Rich, great questions. As always, I think you covered the topic very well. The bottom line is don't just get annoyed with an ad, check it out. Call somebody - doesn't have to be me, love it to be me - but call somebody and check it out. If you were one of the million people who lived, worked at Camp Lejeune during the years 1952 to 1987, our federal government has recognized they did a great wrong to you and you should step up and let that be acknowledged. And with that, I thank you very much for the great job that you do every day.
Richard Helppie
I appreciate that, Mike, very much and I appreciate your taking the time, I know you're really busy with that constant pursuit of justice. So for our listeners, our readers, our viewers, if you or perhaps a family member or a friend may have been exposed, please have a listen. Make your decision and reach out and get help. We honor your service, you literally put your lives on the line and we as a country owe it to you. With our guest, Mike Cox, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
(Watch, Listen, or Read) Environmental Disaster at Camp Lejeune.