$1-Million Orkin Award Doesn’t End Family Fears

In early 1983, Tess Welch called Orkin Pest Control Co. to get rid of an infestation of subterranean termites in her North Park home. Six years later, she and her children are living in apartments, exiled from the $300,000 house the family believes is uninhabitable.

All have been labeled medical risks for life, and the litigation with Orkin may eventually end up in the California Supreme Court.

“No amount of money can take away our pain,” said Welch, who with her family lived in the house for six years after Orkin’s work was completed. “The effects are non-reversible. We’re considered high risks for cancer. We’re susceptible to leukemia and kidney disease, and we all have varying degrees of neurological damage. Right after this happened, my oldest boy used to stay up all night rubbing ice cubes all over his body, the itching was so bad.”

The only good news in what Welch calls “a family horror story” is that, last week, a Superior Court jury awarded the family almost $1 million in damages based on claims that they were contaminated by the pesticides chlordane and heptachlor, which in 1987 were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ray Boucher, the family’s attorney, said Tuesday that the award is “the largest of its kind in the country.” He said the Welches’ case is one of hundreds filed before the EPA ban.

Despite the award, the Welches’ ordeal is far from over. Boucher said four years could pass before the family receives a dime, pending the outcome of all appeals, and even then, “they’re long-term medical risks.”

Sanford Horn, the attorney representing the Atlanta-based company, said Tuesday that Orkin plans to appeal. The Pasadena lawyer said that he was “disappointed” by the verdict and that Orkin was “guilty of no negligence whatsoever in the application of the pesticide.”

“Whatever complaints the family had was not related to anything that Orkin did,” Horn said. “The evidence, in my opinion, did not connect with anything that really happened.”

The home in question, in the 3600 block of East Hawthorn Street, overlooks a canyon through which California 15 and Interstate 805 divide North Park from City Heights. The street is almost eerily quiet, the mood peaceful and serene.

But Tess Welch, 59, said hers is a home that can never be lived in again. She said a recent inspection by San Diego County authorities failed to label the four-bedroom house a public-health hazard. Even so, she said, selling the house would be “immoral,” noting that full disclosure would have to be made to any potential buyer.

She doesn’t believe anti-contamination measures can make the house safe for her or anyone else. She said the family will probably bulldoze the property and “just start over.” She doesn’t believe any surrounding properties have been damaged but said most of her neighbors have been “less than supportive.”

In many ways, the family has started over. Some of their possessions remain in the house, which was occupied until January. Welch and her four children, ranging in age from 29 to 35, are now scattered around the county, living in apartments. She called the physical and psychological fallout from Orkin’s handiwork “a nightmare that wrecked our lives.”

Boucher said each member of the family lived in the house at various times after it was treated. He said each “will receive medical monitoring the rest of their lives,” including visits to as many as three specialists two to three times a year.

In their suit, the Welches charged that Orkin injected chemicals into the soil of an indoor garden and on the surface of the ground in and around the house, causing fumes to permeate the house. A dug-up area near the front of the house remains exposed to this day.

Boucher said Orkin also damaged an electrical conduit under the house when drilling the holes. He said the company hired a cousin of Welch’s to dig a trench to the conduit without warning him about exposure to the chemicals in the dirt. He said two of Welch’s sons were exposed when they bailed out flood water from the trench during a storm.

Those listed as receiving the $989,000 award are Welch and her husband, Robert Sr., (who often spends time out of the city as a federal government employee); their three sons; a daughter, and a son-in-law. Her cousin’s suit brought a judgment against Orkin in an earlier case.

“You can’t believe the nightmares I’ve had,” Tess Welch said. “Sometimes at night, your body will jerk so hard in your sleep that you feel like you’ve broken a bone or had a heart attack. I’ve had numbness in my left arm, and we’ve all developed allergies, which none of us ever had before.”

She said other symptoms, shared by every member of the family, have included headaches, hand tremors, erratic appetite, short- and long-term memory loss and insomnia.

Thelma Porter, who lives next door to the Welches, was called to testify on behalf of Orkin. Porter said roots from three of her fruit trees grow into the Welches’ yard, into soil that the Welches believe is contaminated.

“I’ve been eating fruit off of that tree for six years,” Porter said, “and I haven’t had any problems. I have a grapefruit tree, a lemon tree and two orange trees, and nothing bad has ever happened.

“The (county) department of agriculture came out and told me there was nothing to worry about, that there was no contamination.”

But Porter said she couldn’t understand why the Welches failed to warn her during the six years in question that the soil might be contaminated. And she said she was “mystified” as to why the family lived in the house for six years after the Orkin treatment, moving out only a month before the first scheduled court date.

Steven Welch, one of the three sons, said the family was “not advised to move out” until January, and that they did so on the recommendation of Dr. Janet Sherman, a Virginia-based specialist in environmental diseases. Sherman, used as an expert witness in dozens of similar cases, testified on the Welches’ behalf.

Asked whether the family was concerned about the appearance of moving out so close to the trial date, Steven Welch said, “Yes, we were. But, while living in the home, we did take precautions.”

He said they paid $10,000 for the removal of most of the soil surrounding areas where Orkin had drilled. He said each family member tried to limit his or her time in the house to no more than eight hours a day.

“Plus, there were financial considerations to just picking up and moving,” he said. “As it is, we had to leave most of our furniture inside. They believe it’s contaminated too.”

Boucher said the Welches are not the first Americans to incur medical crises after exposure to chlordane and heptachlor, but believes their problems may be the worst.

“The damages they sustained are really much greater than $1 million,” he said. “They’ll need medical attention for the rest of their lives, plus their home--an expensive home--is wiped out forever.

“The troubling thing is, this could happen to anyone and has happened to a lot of people. So many Americans are just at the mercy of so-called pest-control authorities. There’s so much danger and so much ignorance. No matter how much training the so-called authorities get, they tend not to understand the full dangers associated with pesticides.

“For one thing, pesticides are made to kill, and do a very good job of that. But they also harm a hell of a lot of people who come in contact with them.”

Boucher said the turning point in the trial was the jury’s belief that individual members of the family had suffered damage to the central-nervous system.

Tess Welch said the trial set a precedent in three ways: the size of the award, Boucher’s being allowed to mention the current ban on the chemicals in question and the judge allowing the plaintiffs to mention cancer as a possible long-term side effect.

Boucher said he was able to show that the person who applied the chemicals was not properly licensed or trained to do the job and that he ignored the report of a field representative who had been sent out earlier.

‘I want the world to know about this, because I don’t want anyone to have to go through this,” Tess Welch said. “It’s been six years of hell.”