Mercury Contaminated Kiddie Kollege Documents
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently interviewed partner, Jim Pettit, for a breaking news story arising from mercury contamination at a daycare center in Franklin Township, Gloucester County, New Jersey. Mr. Pettit is the court-appointed Lead Counsel in several class actions concerning Kiddie Kollege Daycare. In 2006 the state closed the daycare center upon learning that the children and were exposed to very high levels of mercury vapor. The daycare used to be a thermometer factory, and that was the source of the mercury contamination. On Friday, April 30, 2010, Mr. Pettit gained access to photographs of documents which had been left behind 4 years ago inside the building. The state had placed the documents inside a plastic bag when the building was razed and when the state then tested the air inside the plastic bag it found mercury levels that were too high to allow the lawyers in the litigation to touch the actual documents themselves. The state decided to photograph the documents and only then the photographs, not the documents themselves, were allowed to be viewed by Mr. Pettit. The NJ DEP spent about $700,000 cleaning up the site. Mr. Pettit represents a class of babies and children who attended Kiddie Kollege and is seeking payment for medical monitoring (surveillance) for the children. Trial is set for the fall of 2010.
