Dina Padilla, the Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Congress in California Congressional District 3, has been sued along with Downey injured workers and Kaiserpapers.org website developer Vicki Travis by the Downey brownfield toxic site developer Stuart Lichter. Candidate Padilla has made a large part of her campaign the issue of cost shifting of injured workers' healthcare costs by self-insured employers and the insurance industry. Lichter who formerly worked for the Federal GSA has allegedly been developing highly toxic sites without properly cleaning them up. As a result, workers at the Downey site in Southern California have become sick from fungus and other toxic material. Following the suit, a hacker attack was also made on the www.kaiserpapers.org website which blocked much of the material and temporarily shut down Dina Padilla's campaign site as well.

Candidate Padilla has charged Lichter and other insurance companies with refusing to take care of the healthcare costs of injured workers and shifting the costs to the Federal government through SSI and other public agencies.

Padilla has charged that her opponent Republican Congressman Dan Lundgren has refused to investigate this cost shifting and growing environmental crisis not only at the Downey toxic site but also with the David Bell case at Agraquest in Davis, California. Bell was infected with fungus and bacteria at the Agraquest site which was owned by former Monsanto pesticide researcher Pam Marrone.

The privatized Downey brownfield site also includes a Kaiser Hospital complex. This highly toxic site contained radioactive material from weapons production and toxic material from many years of dumping by NASA and Boeing. The Southern California Downey site began as a military industrial complex in 1927 and is one of the oldest military toxic sites in the country.
Movie industry workers at Dreamworks and Downey Studio have become ill as a result of the toxins on the site and now have fungus infections, severe headaches, rashes and other afflictions. Also injured Kaiser worker Gail Shephard has been fighting for her healthcare at the Kaiser Downey hospital site.

Lichter's 205 page suit was filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Lichter has significant political influence as a result of his financial relationships in the area.

More information can be found out about these issues at
dinapadillaforcongress.com
www.kaiserpapers.org
www.workersmemorialday.org

For further information call
(415) 867-0628