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More than two years after thousands of Pearl Harbor-area residents drank water tainted by U.S. Navy fuel, impacted families are now getting their day in court. 

U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Kobayashi listened to opening statements and heard from several witnesses on Monday in the first mass tort trial focused on the leaks at the Navy’s Red Hill facility in 2021. 

Plaintiffs’ attorney Kristina Baehr told the court that 5,828 people sought medical care for symptoms like burning of the esophagus, diarrhea and vomiting after the water was contaminated. Beyond their illnesses, residents have lost faith in the military and are facing a lifetime of worry about future health impacts, she said. 

“In this case, they’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Baehr said. 

Department of Justice attorneys have already admitted that the federal government breached a duty of care to its water users and caused a “nuisance.” However, in the face of thousands of people who say they were sickened by fuel exposure, the DOJ is seeking to create doubt that fuel was the culprit. 

“What remains at issue is causation and damages,”  DOJ attorney Rosemary Yogiaveetil said in her opening statement. “To answer those questions, science matters, even when it comes to emotional distress.”

The DOJ has assembled a lineup of experts who say the amount of fuel that entered the water system wasn’t enough to make people sick. If plaintiffs were exposed to jet fuel at all, it lasted “only 24 to 72 hours to at most, low levels of JP-5 fuel,” Yogiaveetil said.

In her remarks, Yogiaveetil described a military operation that had made a mistake but which rectified it quickly. 

“You’ll hear from employees and officials who were involved in the response, how the Navy quickly responded to the emergency. They worked with regulators to keep the public informed. The Navy held daily town halls to answer community questions,” she said.

Customers on the Navy water line began complaining about illnesses and a fuel smell in their water on Nov. 27, 2021, about a week after a catastrophic fuel spill within 400 feet of the drinking water well.

Yogiaveetil credited the Navy for shutting down the well within a day of the complaints. But plaintiffs argue the Navy should have done so immediately following the discovery of the spill days before.

“When they failed to warn, they took away my right to protect my children,” Army Maj. Amanda Feindt, one of the plaintiffs’ witnesses, testified.

Feindt, her husband Patrick and their two children were sickened in the wake of the November fuel spill, she testified.

“This is one of the most traumatic experiences we’ve ever had,” she said.

Then living on Ford Island, they were initially told that their water was “cleared to use,” Feindt testified. Nevertheless, the family stopped drinking the water at home, but her children continued to consume it at day care.

On Dec. 11, her youngest — a previously healthy 1-and-half-year-old — began projectile vomiting, Feindt said. On the drive to the emergency room, the family had to pull over because the baby was retching so violently.

“I was fearful he was going to choke on his own vomit,” she said.

The Feindts have since moved to Virginia, but problems persist, she said. Patrick Feindt, who has undergone multiple surgeries, also suffers from memory lapses and depression, she said. He is “not the same person today” as he was before the crisis, his wife said. Their 6-year-old daughter is traumatized and scared to drink the water at school, according to Feindt. Their son has lung damage, she said.

Collectively, the family has attended nearly 500 medical appointments since the disaster began. Many of those visits were frustrating for the family because doctors wouldn’t give Patrick Feindt and the kids tests for their symptoms, according to Patrick Feindt.

“They didn’t want to treat,” he testified. “They didn’t want to take normal labs. I offered to pee in a cup … and they refused to do it.”

Nastasia Freeman and her husband, Navy Ensign Koda Freedman, also testified on Monday. The fuel spill reactivated Nastasia’s previously dormant seizure disorder, the Freemans testified. And the water caused sores and lesions on Nastasia’s scalp, she said.

“It burned all the time,” she said. “If I took a shower, it felt like razorblades instead of water.”

Nastasia Freeman recalled one day when her son, now 7, “let out this scream and fell to the floor.” She and her husband put his limp body in the car and rushed him to the hospital. In the time since, he has experienced tremors, which he calls the “jigglies,” she said. Her other son experienced symptoms that made him feel like his body was on fire, she said.

“I was worried that he was going to die,” she said.

After repeated seizures, Nastasia herself was feeling like a “zombie” and was worried she wouldn’t make it, she said. She talked to her husband about instituting a “do not resuscitate” order and writing letters to her children.

“Everything has been taken away from us and it seems like it’s going to continue,” she said. “I worry about. Will the kids have cancer?”

On cross-examination, government attorneys sought to highlight that the Freemans and Feindts had health problems prior to the November spill, particularly in the months right before. Many Pearl Harbor families have reported experiencing health issues after a May 2021 fuel spill at Red Hill, and Hawaii Department of Health data has shown detections of total petroleum hydrocarbons in the drinking water source prior to November.

However, both sides in this lawsuit have agreed to focus the question of damages after the November fuel release.

There is no jury in this case. Kobayashi will rule on how much money each bellwether plaintiff is owed.

While plaintiffs initially sued hoping to get compensation for their long-term medical problems and medical monitoring for future illnesses, Kobayashi has ordered the case be much more limited. 

In a ruling earlier this month, the judge said that she would not consider testimony from a key plaintiffs’ witness — a toxicologist who testified that exposure to jet fuel can cause long-term health issues. The expert, Steven Bird, had not analyzed the dose and duration of fuel exposure for each plaintiff and had not considered other potential causes of their injuries, Kobayashi wrote. Other plaintiffs’ witnesses who relied on Bird’s testimony are also excluded, Kobayashi ruled. 

In an area of science with a dearth of human health studies, Bird relied on animal studies. But Kobayashi ruled that conclusions based solely on animal studies are not admissible either.

Kobayashi said on Monday she will not award damages based on the idea that the fuel leaks caused, for example, a chronic gastrointestinal issue.

“I don’t have the evidence to support that,” she said. “But they certainly can talk about how it felt, their belief that they had a GI infection … And what is the worth of going through that experience? And is it reasonable to be concerned that in the future, they’ll have medical conditions, or children will have medical conditions?”

Their testimony won’t prove the “truth of the matter,” Kobayashi said, but will inform her of their perception of their experience.

From the beginning of the trial, Kobayashi expressed a desire to get to the point. She initially sought to limit opening statements to 10 minutes. When plaintiffs’ counsel reminded her that she’d previously agreed to 30 minutes, she agreed. 

During Baehr’s presentation, the attorney held up a container of water that she said came from one of her clients’ homes at the time of the contamination. When Baehr noted that a jelly-like substance was floating on top, Kobayashi cut her off, telling her to “move on.” 

“It’s not time for a stunt,” the judge said.