New court filings say government officials, including Governor Rick Snyder, created a race-based public health crisis by switching the City of Flint over to Flint River water in 2014.
The accusation is part of several class actions and 50 personal injury lawsuits that have been combined into one case. The individual lawsuits generally relate to harm inflicted on residents, from lead poisoning to legionnaires disease, through a switch to Flint River water.
Michael Pitt is one of the co-lead counsels on the case. He said government officials chose to provide Flint River water to the largely black city population while keeping the largely white Genesee County on Detroit water.
“The government officials who are the target of the lawsuit decided to give to the African American population the inferior water which they knew was not fit for human consumption and decided at the same time to provide safe, clean water from the city of Detroit to the white population.”
Pitt said the end result, while perhaps unintentional, had disproportionately racial impacts.
“The end result was the water that was delivered to the African American community was deleterious to their health and of course we all know that people were lead poisoned and there was a legionella outbreak that resulted in 12 deaths and many injuries.”
Pitt said other lawsuits within the case involve compensation for harm that came to city residents as a result of the switch.
“There are multiple other types of claims that are designed to compensate individuals for their injuries and in the case of legionella case, we have several wrongful death cases, as part of our case.”
Pitt said the combined cases are part of roughly two years of litigation.
Residents involved in the complaint are asking for a Flint Victims Compensation Fund to provide medical and financial assistance to those impacted by the crisis.
Pitt said a conference is scheduled with a judge at the end of the month.
Officials with the Governor’s office say they do not comment on pending litigation.