A class action lawsuit against The GEO Group, Inc., a multi-billion dollar corporation profiting from human captivity, and Spartan Chemical Company, Inc., a multi-million dollar chemical manufacturing company. This case seeks justice for thousands of people detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center who were harmed by GEO’s reckless misuse of a toxic pesticide during COVID-19 and its intentional cover-up of that misuse.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, GEO adopted a policy of spraying a toxic and highly corrosive pesticide, HDQ Neutral, as a fine mist throughout detainee living areas at Adelanto every 15 to 30 minutes–day and night, almost 50 times per day. Through litigation, Trial Impact Project developed evidence showing that GEO did this without any advance notice to detained people, while they were eating, sleeping, without practicing room-clearing, or giving detained people the means with which protect themselves from inhaling HDQ Neutral or getting it on their skin. Trial Impact Project uncovered documents and obtained testimony showing that GEO overconcentrated the HDQ Neutral above the EPA-approved dilution for disinfection, increasing the harm to those detained at Adelanto by orders of magnitude.
As health complaints mounted, GEO dismissed them. It lied to the detained people in its care, claiming its use of HDQ Neutral was safe and necessary to stop COVID. GEO also insisted to Congress and the public that it was using the pesticide in line with regulations while its own security staff and nurses from Wellpath, GEO's contracted health services provider, were reporting internally that GEO was doubly concentrating the product and detained people were complaining of injuries.
Meanwhile, Spartan, the manufacturer of HDQ Neutral, stood by watching its sales of HDQ Neutral to GEO at Adelanto balloon. Although Spartan was responsible for training GEO employees on proper use as well as inspecting and adjusting the chemical dispensers at Adelanto, the evidence showed that Spartan failed to warn detained people about the dangers of HDQ Neutral, failed to stop GEO’s misuse of the product, and provided dispensers that could not deliver precise dilutions of HDQ Neutral. Discovery revealed that Spartan repeatedly mislabeled the pesticide, and for those products that were labeled, obscured the labels (including warnings and instructions for use) behind metal containment cages. Indeed, the only written material visible to the detained population at Adelanto about the corrosive, highly regulated pesticide were promotional posters encouraging its use.
Internal documents revealed that GEO—faced with mounting complaints – decided it would not change its actions without a court order. On September 29, 2020, a federal district court judge issued that order. Judge Terry Hatter of the U.S. District Court demanded that GEO immediately cease use of HDQ Neutral at the Adelanto Detention Facility, writing: “[a]fter receiving what appear to be valid complaints from detainees regarding the toxicity and noxiousness of HDQ Neutral, the Government and its contractor, the GEO Group, did absolutely nothing other than to continue the use of HDQ Neutral . . . . It is clear to the Court that the use of HDQ Neutral in Adelanto’s housing units was with a callous disregard for the safety of Adelanto’s detainees and in violation of the detainees’ constitutional right to reasonable safety.”
This case is part of a broader effort by organizers, activists, and attorneys to hold GEO accountable for the inhumane way it treats the people in its detention facilities. GEO has made billions in revenue from its operation of private detention facilities—including a recent $2.1 billion agreement to oversee the expansion of its operation of Adelanto. But it’s not only these ICE contracts making GEO rich; it’s also the way the company cuts corners at its facilities, putting profits over people.
GEO’s reckless use of HDQ Neutral fits into this all-too-familiar pattern: Plaintiffs and class members were trapped at Adelanto unable to avoid exposure to HDQ Neutral. GEO and Spartan persisted with the incessant spraying of HDQ around detained people in the face of mounting detainee complaints and governmental oversight. As a result, detained people suffered short- and long-term health damage, including damage to throat and nasal passages, loss of vision, skin rashes, and long term respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
A new lawsuit filed against one of the nation's largest for-profit prison operators, GEO Group Inc., alleges the company improperly used toxic chemicals to clean its detention centers, causing inmates to get sick.
As the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the United States in early 2020, employees at an Adelanto, Calif., detention center began spraying the facility with a foul-smelling pink aerosol, a lawsuit alleges.
The Trial Impact Project team knew from the beginning that this case would be challenging: the costs to prove a toxic tort are high, class actions in this space are rare, GEO is famously unwilling to play fair in court, and class members feared retaliation for speaking up. But we also knew it was important to shed light on what happened in one of the most notorious detention centers in the country and to take on hard cases with community groups and organizers fighting for change. Along with the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition and the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, our litigators investigated GEO’s misconduct and worked to ensure this case served the interests of people detained at Adelanto.
Over two years, Trial Impact Project and our co-counsel at Hueston Hennigan LLP obtained critical discovery against GEO and Spartan, taking and defending over 50 depositions–including several of GEO’s corporate higher-ups–and combing through hundreds of thousands of documents to piece together what happened behind closed doors at Adelanto. We hired experts in chemistry, environmental health sciences, industrial hygiene, medicine, and toxicology to build our case and highlight the damage of sustained exposure to HDQ Neutral. And we secured a hard-won victory on our motion for class certification, certifying an issue class on general causation: whether HDQ Neutral can cause a host of adverse health effects. The entire class of people detained at Adelanto during GEO’s incessant spraying will benefit from a ruling on this issue.
Trial is bifurcated into two phases: a first phase on Defendants’ statute of limitations defense, in which they claim our Plaintiffs filed the case too late; and a second phase on the merits of Plaintiffs’ claims, at which we will present the true story of how GEO and Spartan allowed our clients and others to suffer in captivity during a global pandemic. With decades of collective trial experience, our team is ready and well-equipped to hold GEO and Spartan accountable at trial.
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