Attorney gives insight about GenX concerns

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — An environmental attorney who has already made his mark in Wilmington with water contamination concerns  has his on eye on GenX.

The past has a way of repeating itself.

“Wilmington is the poster child for GenX, just like Wilmington was the poster child for MTBE,” Scott Summy, head of the Dallas environmental litigation group at Baron and Budd, said.

Summy won a successful water contamination case 20 years ago in Wilmington against Conoco Oil, a company once owned by Dupont. He also said he is familiar with the situation Wilmington is now facing with GenX.

“That was the very fist MTBE case tried in the united states and it was right there in Wilmington and it just reminds me a lot of this case because there hasn’t been any GenX cases in the united states and this will be the first,”

Because Summy has been down this road before, he has advice for those wondering what to do.

“Keep your ear to the ground, stay in tune with the news, however if you have kidney cancer, liver cancer, testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis if you have something like that in your family I would likely go ahead and call legal counsel to get good advice on whether or not it could possibly be related,”Summy said.

Summy said he could see GenX becoming a big deal.

“If the facts shake out and there’s clear liability I think you’re going to see a major league litigation and it’s going to be very large scale and I think it’s going to be a big deal,”Summy said.

The problem is not with the water districts Summy said, but with the companies that mass produce chemicals that nobody knows about.

Summy told us that he has had over 100 calls about GenX and they are investigating it now.