Global Security Newswire

The second phase of a trial for 49 construction workers who sued the U.S. Army after becoming violently ill while working at a chemical weapons incinerator in Oregon opened yesterday, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, May 19).

A judge ruled in February that the Army was negligent for failing to ensure that workers at the Umatilla Chemical Depot received hospital care on a timely basis during the 1999 incident, as well as for the response to reported symptoms of sarin contamination.  The judge is set to decide in this phase of the trial whether there was a nerve agent leak (William McCall, Associated Press/Salem Statesman Journal, June 15).