Camp Lejeune’s victims are turning into ghosts haunting the federal judges and attorneys struggling with a flood of claims and lawsuits over harm from contaminated drinking water at the Marine Corps base in North Carolina from the 1950s to the 1980s.
One of them is Dan Mason, a Marine from September 1975 to September 1979 who spent more than a year at Camp Lejeune when toxic chemicals in the coastal base’s water supply were at a peak. Mason was diagnosed in 2012 with multiple health problems, including a mass in his kidney and a type of lymphoma, and died in 2023 after a heart attack at age 67.
His wife of 43 years, Jeanie Mason of Corvallis, Oregon, is determined not to let his death be forgotten.
Dan Mason sued the government after Congress passed a law in 2022 giving anyone who spent more than 30 days at Camp Lejeune between 1953 and 1987 the right to file a damage claim with the Navy and a lawsuit in federal court if the Navy did not respond in six months.
His widow is now continuing her late husband’s case as a wrongful death suit — not for any monetary reasons but to hold the U.S. military accountable.
“The code of the Marines is honor, courage and commitment,” Jeanie Mason said in an interview online. “Dan lived by that code, and he and his fellow Marines should expect nothing less than what the Marine Corps expected of them: Honor the lives of those who would give theirs for their fellow Marines and to protect us here at home, have the courage to admit that there was a mistake, and make the commitment to help the Marines and their families through this battle.”
Since enactment of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act in August 2022, giving victims of the contamination two years to seek compensation, more than 400,000 claims have been submitted to the Navy and 2,635 lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, according to the Bell Legal Group in Georgetown, S.C., the lead law firm for plaintiffs in the litigation.
The government is expecting more than $21 billion to be paid out eventually, but so far very few settlements have been reached and only about 400 offers have been made, attorneys for the plaintiffs say. The lawsuits are also moving at a snail’s pace, with the first trials in so-called bellwether cases for specific diseases not expected to begin until next year, the attorneys say.
While the cases are complicated, with lawyers for both sides arguing about evidence linking the contamination to later health problems, the long process is adding to the entire Camp Lejeune saga.
“The fundamental sadness of this case is that while the court proceeds, there are real people here who are suffering and dying every single day,” said Eric Flynn, a partner in the Bell Legal Group.
Another attorney handling multiple cases for Camp Lejeune victims, Andrew Van Arsdale of the AVA Law Group in San Diego, said hundreds and possibly thousands of people who were exposed to the contamination have died before the Navy and Marine Corps have even acknowledged responsibility.
“So it goes back to this old saying: Justice delayed can be or is justice denied. And that’s what’s happened here,” Van Arsdale said.
“We host these meetings every Friday,” he said. ”Men and women that were on at the beginning aren’t there anymore. And their spouses, they’re kind of carrying the torch for them instead.”
Legislation aimed at speeding up the process has only two backers so far — Sens. Thom Tillis, R- N.C., and Richard Blumenthal, D- Conn. — and has seen no action.
“I think Congress needs to step up and take care of this as well,” Jeanie Mason said. “I mean, the lawsuits are proceeding, but they’re very slow.”
‘I continue Dan’s fight’
Dan Mason joined the Marines not long after graduating from high school in Redondo Beach, Calif., because “he wanted to be the best,” Jeanie said. Her parents met Dan when he was on a tour in England, and he and Jeanie connected when she was visiting family during a break from the University of Florida in 1979.
“We fell in love and we went home — he back to California, me back to Florida — and he proposed to me over the phone as soon as I got back home,” she said. They were married in 1980.
After his time in the Marines, Mason signed up to be a flight officer in the Navy and spent more than 11 years on various assignments, including a stint on the USS Nimitz. But during the last half of his Navy service, starting in 1989, there were warning signs of problems to come: At every physical, doctors found traces of blood in his urine.
Mason left the Navy in 1994, and the couple moved through the Northwest to follow his career path: as a 911 supervisor and owner of a security business in Bend, Ore.; as a developer of a 911 center in Idaho; and as an airport manager in Corvallis.
The serious problems began in 2011 and 2012 when doctors found a mass around Dan’s kidney, and during an eight-hour surgery it was discovered he also had a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Years of treatments and hospital visits followed.
Dan decided to retire at age 60 in 2016 “so that he would have time with me, our family, two dogs, and have time to travel in the U.S. in our travel trailer outside of treatments,” Jeanie said. “I treasure that time.”
It was around the time of his retirement that the Masons connected Dan’s health problems to Camp Lejeune’s water contamination, and after a medical exam in 2017 he was awarded 100% disability payments by the Department of Veterans Affairs — in the Masons’ eyes, an acknowledgment that their suspicions were correct.
After the 2022 law was enacted, Dan filed a claim with the Navy and then a lawsuit in federal court saying his lymphoma was caused by the contamination at Camp Lejeune. It might have been one of the bellwether cases for that disease that will be among the first to go to trial, but fate intervened.
Between September 2022 and July 2023, Dan had a heart attack and a double bypass, he learned the cancer had spread to his liver, and then he had another case of cardiac arrest that led his doctor to recommend him for hospice.
“Dan was a Marine. He fought with courage and dignity, strength and humor. He sent the doctor out of the room. He said, ‘No, I’m not going to talk to you,’” Jeanie said. She took him home, where he died on Aug. 14, 2023, “surrounded by his wildlife in his fields, this forest,” she said.
A year after his death, the Navy proposed a settlement based on his lymphoma. “But they failed to take into account his passing, which affected the amount offered,” Jeanie said. “I rejected it, because money is not going to bring Dan back. I am doing this to continue to fight.”
A line in the settlement offer was also off-putting, she said: “This stipulation of Compromise Settlement and Release is not, is in no way intended to be, and should not be construed as, an admission of liability or fault on the part of the United States, its agents, servants, or employees, and it is specifically denied that they are liable to Plaintiff(s),” the letter stated.
“It does not look like justice to me, although I have no idea what justice looks like,” she said. “At least they could admit that there was a mistake made and accept some responsibility. I continue Dan’s fight.”
Even after all the pain, Jeanie said Dan wasn’t angry with the Marine Corps, which he loved. “I want you to know that even though Dan died from the water of Camp Lejeune, he was proud to be a Marine,” she said. “He would do it all over again.”
She added, “I will say that we were exceptionally lucky in that Dan was able to carry on, except for his last year, pretty much a full life,” including being able to walk both his daughters down the aisle for their weddings: Heather’s in 2013 and Colleen’s in 2016.
“But there are families who have suffered terribly, financially, emotionally, physically, painfully” as a result of the Camp Lejeune water contamination. “We are grateful that Dan was so lucky.”
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