Franklin residents sue over alleged exposure to hazardous waste from factory sites
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Sixteen Franklin residents are suing the owners of two factory sites for allegedly exposing them to hazardous waste for decades.
The lawsuit, filed in Marion Superior Court on Dec. 6, alleges that the defendants released large quantities of several known carcinogens from their Franklin sites into the city through the air, soil, groundwater, and sewer system.
Defendant Amphenol Corporation, a Delaware-based operation, formerly owned and operated a facility at 980 Hurricane Road through its predecessor Bendix Corporation. Defendant Honeywell International Inc. is also a successor of Bendix.
From 1963 to 1983, Bendix conducted various operations, like electroplating, machining, and assembling and storing manufactured components, at the facility.
Defendant BorgWarner Inc. is also a Delaware-based corporation that took over Indiana-based Franklin Power Products Inc. to become BorgWarner PDS Peru. From 1985 to 2006, Franklin Power owned and operated a facility at 400 N. Forsythe St. where it disassembled and rebuilt diesel and gasoline engines.
BorgWarner Peru is not currently an active company and only exists on paper.
Attorneys for the defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
Plaintiffs say the companies have been releasing chlorinated solvents and other volatile organic solvents into the air and ground since the early-to-mid 1980s and have known about it the whole time.
Amphenol previously agreed to clean up its facility through a 1990 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act consent order with the Environmental Protection Agency but failed to remediate it, according to the lawsuit.
Some residents in Franklin believe the toxic materials Amphenol released is partly responsible for the spike in rare childhood cancers and other health problems the area has seen in the last few years, according to a report from Indiana Public Broadcasting News. The BorgWarner facility at 400 N. Forsythe St. is not mentioned in that news report as a potential contamination source.
However, the lawsuit accuses all defendants of releasing site contaminants that are “injurious to the Plaintiffs’ health and an obstruction to the free use of Plaintiffs’ properties, so as essentially to interfere with the Plaintiffs’ comfortable enjoyment of life and property.”
The lawsuit notes that an “alarming and tragic pattern” of at least 58 cases of childhood cancer in and around Franklin prompted citizens to form the If It Was Your Child group and pressured the EPA to investigate.
The lawsuit claims all defendants had knowledge of the mishandling, storage, and proper disposal of carcinogens prior to the 1980s and disposed of the materials directly into the sites’ sewer lines.
The defendants did not inform plaintiffs and surrounding residents about the contamination until late 2018 and early 2019, according to court documents.
In June 2022, the EPA proposed plans to clean up the Amphenol plant, which included injecting material into the ground around the site to breakdown harmful chemicals in the area. That cleanup began this year.
In 2019, several residents filed a class action lawsuit against the corporations in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Indiana. That lawsuit was settled in September when the parties agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice.
Now, plaintiffs are suing the companies in state court for private nuisance, strict liability, negligence and gross negligence, and punitive damages.
Robert Dassow, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he hopes “the folks that have been damaged are made whole as a result of this case. You can’t imagine, if you own a house, that you’d worry about this seepage of carcinogens into your house, exposure to your children, exposure to whomever. That’s the base concern and we want them to be held responsible for that.”