“Guardian Investigation Fuels Class Action Lawsuit Against Petro Giant”: Miller & Paschal Interviewed About Firm’s Marathon Refinery Explosion Case

Fishman Haygood attorneys Kerry Miller and Hogan Paschal were recently interviewed by the Guardian for the article “Guardian investigation fuels class action lawsuit against petro giant.” As reported, Marathon Petroleum Co. now faces an expanded class action lawsuit related to its Garyville, La.-based refinery’s chemical release that led to three-days’ worth of fires and emissions in August 2023, purportedly with “no offsite impacts” beyond the facility’s fence line. This most recent article follows up the Guardian’s September 2024 exposé on the incident, “The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth,” which uncovered records, 911 calls,  police reports, emails, and other previously non-public data refuting this claim. Read the latest from the publication here.

As reported by outlets like Louisiana Illuminator, Marathon’s Garyville refinery—the third largest in the United States—has been the site of numerous hazardous incidents, many of which have gone largely unremedied. The August 2023 fire stems from a corroded holding tank that leaked naphtha, a liquid hydrocarbon chemical mixture used in gasoline manufacturing. On the morning of the 25^th, hours after the release began, live electrical wiring underneath the leaky tank ignited the pooling chemical.

According to research, any level of exposure to naphtha can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, light headedness, and a burning sensation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat. Extended exposure to the chemical mixture affects the nervous system and kidneys. Additionally, naphtha contains and releases upon combustion the known carcinogen benzene, for which there is no safe level of human exposure.

Less than an hour after the first fire on August 25, a second Marathon Refinery storage tank containing 40,000 barrels of diesel went up in flames. The fires resulted in a massive plume of black smoke and prompted, hours after the fires began, a mandatory evacuation for people living and working within a two-mile radius of the refinery. Though the mandatory evacuation was lifted that same afternoon, sites at the refinery continued to burn for days with several large flare ups, including that of a third storage tank containing nearly 10,000 barrels of highly flammable hydrocarbons. No further orders for evacuation were made.

Fishman Haygood and other area law firms filed complaints on behalf of property owners against Marathon related to the forced evacuation of their properties and other damages associated with the uncontrolled fire and related emissions. In May 2024, Judge Darrel J. Papillion granted an order to consolidate the cases into a single class action.

Significantly, Garyville is in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” the nickname for a stretch of land along the banks of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans known for its high number of petrochemical manufacturing facilities. Communities in the area’s historically Black neighborhoods are typically comprised of lower-income residents, generations of whom have been exposed to an inordinate amount of toxic pollution for decades.

A little more than a year after the incident, the Guardian published “The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth’” on September 9, 2024. As detailed in the article, the publication’s investigative journalists uncovered evidence indicating that the August 2023 refinery event produced the second largest accidental release of flammable chemicals since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began monitoring for such events in 1994. Guardian reporters also uncovered evidence, including images of the smoke cloud taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellite, that the fire’s impacts extended far beyond both the refinery’s and the evacuation zone’s perimeters. Such data stands in stark contrast to assurances of containment made by Marathon and the local parish government, evidence that officials actively worked to downplay during and after the incident.

Marathon concluded its internal investigation into the matter in October 2024. An EPA investigation remains ongoing.

Equipped with this new information, Fishman Haygood filed an amended complaint in November 2024 to include class members who owned property, operated a business, or worked and/or resided within an expanded area of impact as opposed to just those within the mandatory evacuation zone. As detailed in the suit, alleged violations include negligence, trespass, and nuisance claims. Click here to read the amended complaint.

In addition to Kerry and Hogan, the Fishman Haygood team is led by Paul Thibodeaux, Danny Dysart, Brennan O’Keefe, and Isabel Englehart. Co-counsel on the case includes attorneys from firms Lambert Zainey, JJC Law, and Taylor & McDowell Law.

Fishman Haygood hopes to change the “no impacts beyond the fence line” narrative so often used by Marathon and other petrochemical facilities like it in the aftermath of such incidents. Read more about the firm’s Environmental Practice here.