MILWAUKEE (WTAQ) – A former Marine and his brother who started a massive fire at the Patrick Cuday Incorporated meat packing plant when they launched a stolen military flare six years ago to celebrate the 4th of July are about to get the bill.
The final amount will depend on how U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa rules in a years’-long civil case brought against the United States by the insurance companies that covered much of the losses to the business.
The liability portion of the case has already been settled through mediation before a federal magistrate judge. Now it’s a matter of just how big a check the Federal Government will write.
The insurance companies say the lost value of affected real estate, destroyed business equipment, lost profits and other expenses amounts to nearly $188 million. By late 2010, the insurers had settled claims from Patrick Cudahy’s parent company, Smithfield Foods, for $208 million.
Six of those insurers are now trying to recover damages from the United States. They sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The government says the current figure, “rests on factual misstatements, dubious assumptions, confused reasoning and unrealistic projections”.
The lawsuit contended the Navy negligently failed to control its inventory of flares at Camp Wilson in Twentynine Palms, California, where Joshua Popp, a Marine Corps reservist, was stationed in 2007.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)
