Homeowners' Class Action Seeks Damages for Contamination From Lead Cables

Defendants AT&T, Lumen and Verizon collectively removed to U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana in Lafayette what’s believed to be one of the first class actions brought by homeowners against the telecom industry for legacy lead-laden cables that reduced their property values.

Plaintiffs Gary Blum and Lucia Billiot filed their complaint Nov. 6 in the 16th Judicial District Court, St. Mary Parish, alleging the defendants “have left behind an extensive network of lead-covered cables and other associated lead equipment stretching across Louisiana,” said the notice of removal Tuesday (docket 6:23-cv-01748). Blum and Billiot allege that the cables “are an unlawful intrusion on private property” and are causing all plaintiffs and putative class members “property damage and a risk to human health.”

Blum and Billiot seek recovery on behalf of themselves and a putative class that includes all people “who own immovable property in Louisiana that has been damaged by Defendants’ lead-covered telephone cables and associated lead equipment,” said the notice of removal. They allege “no temporal limitation” on their putative class, it said.

The defendants’ “profit-driven decisions” to leave these “dangerous lead-covered cables” in place was made even though the cables “became obsolete and have been replaced by several newer, safer generations of telecommunications cable and equipment,” said the complaint. Their decision “to line their own pockets by leaving the leaden cables and equipment strewn all over Louisiana has caused significant damage to property across Louisiana and is a violation of the law,” it said.

The defendants owned and operated the lead-covered cables “and are responsible for their removal and for restoration of the property damage” they have caused, “including soil and water contamination,” said the complaint. Their predecessor companies installed the majority of the cables before the 1970s, it said.

When technology advanced, the predecessor companies “upgraded the telephone lines by installing new ones,” first by using “plastic sheathed lines,” and later fiber optic cables as the industry standard, said the complaint. During those advancements, the defendants “made the decision to leave the degraded and largely obsolete lead-covered cables and associated equipment in the ground and on the surface all over Louisiana,” it said.

The defendants “have known for decades” that the lead-covered cables “should be removed” and posed “an environmental hazard” to people, animals and property, said the complaint. But instead of removing them or warning the public about the presence of lead on property across the U.S., the defendants “kept silent in the hopes that this unknown source of lead contamination would remain undiscovered and that they would not have to pay to remove it,” it said. All that changed in July when the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles that illuminated the issue, it said.

Plaintiffs Blum and Billiot weren’t aware that the defendants had left lead cables on or adjacent to their properties until the WSJ’s reporting in July, said the complaint. The defendants “have a duty” to remove the “offending” lead cables on their properties, it said. They also have a duty “to clean up any contamination” resulting from their lead cables, including in the soil, surface water and groundwater, “and to prevent it from migrating onto neighboring properties,” it said.

The defendants are liable “for any and all remedies determined to be appropriate” by the court, said the complaint. The plaintiffs seek injunctive relief for removal of the cables, plus restoration of their properties and monetary compensation, it said.