Orleans-Area Residents 'Vindicated' by Katrina Ruling

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,575763,00.html

New Orleans-Area Residents 'Vindicated' by Katrina Ruling Against Army Corps of Engineers
Thursday, November 19, 2009

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans-area residents have been "vindicated" after a historic ruling that found the Army Corps of Engineers negligent in failing to prevent Hurricane Katrina flooding, an attorney in the case said Thursday.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the corps' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding during Katrina in August 2005.

Lawyer Joe Bruno, who represented plaintiffs in the case against the Corps of Engineers, praised the decision and said those affected by the devastating storm have been "vindicated."

Another speaker at the news conference said residents are finally seeing justice served and vowed that the decision will stand.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.

He said, however, that the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where one of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout.

The ruling should give more than 100,000 other people, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

Bruno, one of the lead plaintiffs lawyer, said the ruling underscored the Army Corps' long history of failure to properly protect the New Orleans region.

"It's high time we look at the way these guys do business and do a full re-evaluation of the way it does business," Bruno said Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.