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Judge gives go-ahead to MRGO suit - NOLA.com

Judge gives go-ahead to MRGO suit
He clears way to hear case against corps
Saturday, March 21, 2009
By Susan Finch
Staff writer
A federal court judge in New Orleans cleared the way Friday for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to face trial next month in a lawsuit that claims the agency's failure to heed environmental laws in building and maintaining the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet caused environmental damage that led to massive flooding in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish during Hurricane Katrina.
The case, which Judge Stanwood Duval is scheduled to hear without a jury starting April 20, was filed by WDSU-TV news anchorman Norman Robinson and five other plaintiffs whose homes or businesses in eastern New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish were swamped during the August 2005 storm .
"We are pleased to have overcome this final hurdle to securing the first trial for Katrina victims and to holding the Army Corps accountable," said Los Angeles lawyer Pierce O'Donnell, the plaintiffs' lead trial counsel in the nearly three-year-old case. "Battling the federal government with its own army of lawyers and unlimited resources has been a daunting ordeal."

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