Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins is urging Camp Lejeune veterans to come in for toxic exposure screenings, and warning that trial lawyers are skimming fees he considers indefensible from settlement payouts meant for sick and dying service members.
Collins made the case during an appearance on the Just the News, No Noise TV show, pressing veterans and their families to take advantage of VA care while the federal government works to accelerate compensation through a settlement program that has, by any honest measure, moved at a crawl. More than three years after Congress opened the courthouse door, fewer than one percent of claimants have received a dime.
The numbers tell a grim story. The Navy received more than 408,000 administrative claims by the August 2024 filing deadline. The government has approved roughly $854 million in settlement offers under the Elective Option program created in September 2023, but has actually paid out only $622 million. That leaves hundreds of thousands of veterans and family members still waiting, many of them gravely ill, as Just the News reported.
Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, sits outside Jacksonville, North Carolina. From 1953 to 1987, chemicals from dry-cleaning solvents and other industrial waste leached into the base's water supply. The federal government acknowledges that roughly one million service members, families, and civilian workers drank that water.
The contamination was not disclosed until 1985. Four years later, the site was declared a Superfund cleanup zone. The health toll, birth defects, numerous cancers, Parkinson's disease, lung disease, accumulated for decades before Congress acted.
The Camp Lejeune Justice Act, passed as part of the 2022 PACT Act, finally gave victims a two-year window to file administrative claims with the Navy. That window closed in August 2024. More than 3,500 victims who could not resolve their claims administratively filed federal lawsuits.
Settlement payments under the Elective Option range from $100,000 to $550,000, depending on the claimant's illness and time spent at the base. But the pace has frustrated veterans, attorneys, and lawmakers alike.
Collins framed his message as both practical and urgent. He told veterans not to wait on the legal system when the VA can screen them now.
"I think it's moving ahead, and again, I would encourage every veteran out there to take, especially if they're associated with this, or even others, is get to the VA. There's a lot of folks who've not taken advantage of the toxic screening that we're providing, making sure that they're getting the proper treatment and care that they may not know that they need."
That appeal carries weight. Many veterans exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune may not realize they qualify for VA screening, or may have given up on the federal bureaucracy entirely. Collins wants them back in the system, not just for compensation, but for medical care they may need right now.
The broader fight over how the government treats veterans who were harmed by its own negligence extends well beyond Camp Lejeune. Lawmakers have also pushed to reform federal rules that penalize career schools serving veterans, another area where Washington's promises to those who served have fallen short of the reality.
Collins did not mince words about attorneys collecting large fees from settlements meant for sick veterans. He said he has been working with Senator Sullivan, who has highlighted the issue, and called some of the fee arrangements flatly unacceptable.
"I've been working with Senator Sullivan, who has done a great job of also highlighting the fact that there's a lot of, all of a sudden, lawyers and others who want to get involved in this and taking some fees that, frankly, are horrendously wrong."
The Elective Option program caps attorney fees at 20 percent for administrative settlements and 25 percent for court-filed cases. Even with those caps, the Justice Department estimates that lawyers have collected a combined $124 million in fees from Elective Option settlements alone.
That figure is worth sitting with. Veterans who were poisoned on a military base, by their own government, are handing over tens of millions of dollars to attorneys before they see a settlement check. The fee caps exist precisely because Congress and the executive branch recognized the potential for abuse. And yet $124 million has already gone to lawyers while fewer than one percent of claimants have been paid at all.
Collins said the administration is watching the situation closely and that the president is personally attentive to the issue.
"So, we're watching this carefully. The President is very sensitive, I think, to the needs of our veterans who serve, even those at Lejeune, when there was a problem. We're working, and I think you'll see more and more improvements in that as we come."
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward has taken steps to speed up the process. In a March statement, Woodward said the Justice Department had "reprioritized approving settlements for Camp Lejeune victims and families, many of whom sadly had to wait years for justice." He pledged to continue approving settlements on a weekly basis.
Woodward also signed a memorandum making all 3,724 federal lawsuits eligible for consideration under the Elective Option, a significant expansion that could move thousands of cases out of the litigation pipeline and into the faster settlement track. Fox News reported on the DOJ's accelerated settlement push, noting the department's effort to ramp up the pace of offers.
About two dozen bellwether trials, test cases representing each illness linked to the contamination, are scheduled for later this year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. Those trials will likely shape the terms and trajectory of the remaining claims.
Not everyone in the legal community shares Collins's optimism about the pace of resolution. J. Edward Bell III, the lead attorney for plaintiffs' lawyers and based in South Carolina, offered measured praise but sharp criticism. He said he appreciated "any acceleration of help" but called the DOJ's posture shortsighted. Bell argued that the government caused these problems in the first place, hiding the fact that the water was poisonous for decades, and should not now be touting incremental progress as a victory.
Attorney Ronald Miller struck a similar tone, pointing to the human cost of bureaucratic delay.
"Claimants continue to die" while lawyers argue over process, Miller said, adding that the veterans and their families "were poisoned on American soil while serving their country" and "should not have to spend their final years fighting the same government that made them sick."
Those are hard words to argue with. The tension between the administration's claims of progress and the plaintiffs' frustration is real. Both sides agree the process has been too slow. They disagree about who deserves the blame, and who is profiting from the delay.
The pattern of the federal government causing harm and then making victims fight for years to receive compensation is not unique to Camp Lejeune. Americans targeted by government overreach in other contexts have faced similar ordeals, as seen in the recent IRS settlement that created a fund for citizens wrongly targeted by the agency.
Strip away the legal jargon and the Washington press statements, and the math is damning. One million people exposed. More than 408,000 claims filed. Fewer than one percent paid. Lawyers have collected $124 million. Veterans are dying while their cases sit in queues.
Collins deserves credit for pressing veterans to get screened and for calling out excessive attorney fees in plain language. The DOJ's move to expand Elective Option eligibility to all 3,724 federal lawsuits is a concrete step. Weekly settlement approvals, if sustained, could meaningfully change the pace.
But the gap between $854 million approved and $622 million paid means more than $200 million in approved settlements is still stuck somewhere in the pipeline. That gap needs an explanation, and a fix.
The bellwether trials later this year will test whether the government's settlement offers are fair or whether they lowball veterans whose illnesses cost them far more than $550,000 in medical bills, lost wages, and suffering. Those trials will also determine whether the Elective Option becomes the primary resolution mechanism or whether full-scale litigation becomes unavoidable.
For the veterans and families who drank poisoned water on an American military base for thirty-four years, the question is simpler than any of that: When does the check arrive, and how much of it goes to the person who got sick?
A government that can spend trillions in a fiscal year ought to be able to answer that question faster than this.
