Nuclear Setback

Kerr-McGee found liable

In the wake of Three Mile Island, the battered nuclear power industry suffered another blow last week, this one in a court of law. A federal jury in Oklahoma City handed down a finding in the celebrated case of Karen Silkwood that vastly increased the chances that a company using nuclear materials might have to pay heavy damages for harming not only its employees, but people in surrounding areas.

The jury found Kerr-McGee Corp. negligent in the handling of highly radioactive plutonium because it did not protect Silkwood, a lab technician, from contamination. The jury awarded her three children $10.5 million. She herself was killed mysteriously in 1974 when her car ran off a road as she was on her way to give evidence of the plant's carelessness to a New York Times reporter.

During the eleven-week trial, the manner of Silkwood's death was not an issue. The case centered on how she had become so poisoned by plutonium that she was, in the words of one expert witness, "married to lung cancer." Lawyers for both Silkwood and the corporation agreed that the young woman's apartment had been contaminated by plutonium from the plant, which has since been closed. The company contended that she had carried the metal out of the plant in small quantities and had, either intentionally or accidentally, poisoned herself. Why? "Maybe she was simply trying to create an incident to embarrass the company," suggested Kerr-McGee Attorney Bill Paul. Scoffing at that notion, Silkwood Attorney Gerald Spence hinted that the company had deliberately contaminated the lab worker because she was trying to reveal unsafe company practices. Asked Spence: "Did she know too much?"

The jury seemed impressed by the testimony of witnesses claiming that Kerr-McGee had carelessly handled radioactive materials. But the decision awarding damages to Silkwood's heirs went far beyond the simple finding that the company was guilty of negligence. Kerr-McGee was liable, Judge Frank G.Theis instructed the jury, even if the company had followed all safety rules, so long as Silkwood had not contaminated herself.

That point and the fact that the case involved radioactive poisoning outside the plant itself have enormous implications, if the finding is sustained on appeal: a company might be held liable for the harm it caused employees and people outside the plant, no matter how stringently it obeyed regulations.

Kerr-McGee plans to appeal the case. Dean McGee, co-founder and current chairman of the company, had declared that, whatever the verdict, his firm did not expect to make any changes in its operating practices.

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