New Orleans, LA: (Jan-31-08) A class action lawsuit was brought against the US Army Corps of Engineers over levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina. The suit claimed that the agency failed to protect the city. Records show that the class action lawsuit led to about 489,000 claims by businesses, government entities and residents, with an estimated trillions of dollars in damages against the agency.
In a recent development, sources close to the case stated that a federal judge threw out the key class action suit, saying his hands were tied by the law. Officials said that the fate of many of those claims was pinned to that lawsuit and a similar one filed over flooding from a navigation channel in St. Bernard Parish. As of now, US District Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the Corps should be held immune over failures in drainage canals that caused much of the flooding of New Orleans in August 2005. The ruling apparently relies on the Flood Control Act of 1928, which made the federal government immune when flood control projects like levees break. [
