O'DONNELL LAUNCHES HURRICANE KATRINA BLOG
Los Angeles trial attorney Pierce O'Donnell has created a website to focus attention on the upcoming federal trial against the U.S. government and the Army Corps of Engineers for their negligence that caused the catastrophic flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina nearly three years ago.
The website was unveiled roughly 100 days before the September 8 trial date. The site will feature breaking news, the latest developments in the showdown between O'Donnell's legal team and the government, a blog featuring O'Donnell's insights on the mammoth case and excerpts of a videotaped interview with the noted attorney.
The Honorary Stanwood J. Duval, Jr., the presiding judge, has twice denied the Army Corp's efforts to have the case thrown out of court and he is expected to hear another challenge from the Corps this summer. If the third challenge fails, the trial is expected to start September 8 and last about three weeks.
The trial--and the events leading up to it--will be widely watched by public officials, environmentalists, taxpayer watchdogs, and lawyers across the country because of the epic issues involved. In typically colorful prose, O'Donnell has framed the legal battle as the likely first "Trial of the New Century" and one that is the best and last hope of finally bringing justice to the hundreds of thousands of Katrina's unsuspecting victims.
At the core of the case is O'Donnell's argument that the catastrophic flooding during Katrina was not an act of God, but directly related to the actions of the Army Corps going back a half century.
"The drowning of Greater New Orleans-and 1,300 deaths with hundreds of billions of dollars of property damage-was a man-made disaster, not a natural one," O'Donnell will argue.
The broader story O'Donnell will tell is how an "Iron Triangle" of players--in this case the Army Corps, the U.S. Congress and private contractors--all played major roles in constructing an inadequate flood control system for a city that exists mostly below sea level. It is also a story of a how a rogue government agency-the Army Corps-answers to virtually no one-not the military, not the Congress, not the President.
The Katrina trial centers around a navigation channel, known locally as the MR-GO, that acted as a "Hurricane Highway" connecting the Gulf of Mexico with downtown New Orleans. Completed in 1968, the MR-GO was intended to provide shipping traffic a more direct route to the Port of New Orleans.
Instead, the channel proved to be an economic bust as well as one of the nation's worst environmental disasters. While very few ships used the channel, the saltwater from the Gulf destroyed the fresh-water cypress swamps and wetlands that had acted as buffers to hurricane-force tides for centuries.
O'Donnell will argue in court--and demonstrate through dramatic computer models similar to ones used by Al Gore in his documentary on global warming--that the MR-GO's "funnel effect" significantly boosted Katrina's storm surge in New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and all of St. Bernard Parish.
"That alone meant the difference between minor flooding and the biblical deluge that tragically destroyed our 35th largest city," O'Donnell will argue in court.
While the Army Corps had admitted that its massively flawed levee system catastrophically failed in 50 places and inundated a 100-square mile area, it has refused to accept responsibility for damages and has successfully secured dismissal of a major class action lawsuit on the grounds of sovereign immunity. The federal government adamantly refuses to admit that the MR-GO was defective or that it caused any flooding that would not have otherwise occurred.
The case-- Robinson v. United States--is also likely to be closely watched nationally because the Army Corps has built potentially defective flood control systems and waterways across the country. A favorable verdict in the New Orleans case would go a long way toward holding the Army Corps accountable in other areas where its work has been shoddy and inadequate, he says.
"Katrina is a cautionary tale," O'Donnell said in a recent interview. "It can-and will happen-someplace else."
What O'Donnell is seeking on behalf of the six plaintiffs is a verdict of liability against the Corps--a verdict that his legal team of 20 law firms will then take to Congress and the new President to establish a 9/11-style compensation system for the all Katrina. In addition to 350,000 individual claimants, the State of Louisiana, City of New Orleans, and St. Bernard Parish have filed damages claims running into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Similarly, universities, schools, businesses, and others are asserting claims against the Army Corps.
The website will also link to key legal documents on file in the litigation; video of O'Donnell describing the case in all its emotion and legal nuance; a link to his resume and summary of his long career; and a look at the other prominent trial lawyers around the country involved in the case, including Tom Girardi, Joseph Cotchett, Mark Robinson, Jerry McKernan, Joseph Bruno, and John Andry. The site will be updated several times a week to keep pace with the case's fast-moving developments.
"People in New Orleans are hungry for justice," O'Donnell says, "and hopefully the federal court will provide a full measure this fall."
While the website will focus on Katrina, it will eventually include other Public Justice issues for which O'Donnell has been fighting. As a passionate civil libertarian, O'Donnell will have one link referring to "In Time of War," the book he wrote about the flawed prosecution of Nazi saboteurs in America during World War II. The Bush Administration used that case as legal justification for the way in which it has incarcerated and tried suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.