KBR Sued Again, Featuring Dogs Running Around With Human Arms In Their Mouths

If it’s not one thing (such as accusations of sexual harassment) with those crazy cats at Kellogg, Brown & Root, it’s another.

A lawsuit against the company recently filed in Houston federal court accuses its workers of exposing military and non-military personnel in Iraq to contaminated food, contaminated water, and improperly incinerated human remains. Yeah, that’s right. Human remains. Joshua Eller, the principal plaintiff, says he witnessed a wild dog running around base one day carrying a human arm in its mouth.

The first allegation deals with water. According to the lawsuit, KBR
provided most of the water used to drink, swim in, or treat the wounded
with, and was supposed to monitor and maintain its quality. KBR is
accused of failing to test the water and then distributing unsafe,
untreated water.

Next there’s the spoiled food. Eller alleges
KBR served U.S. forces chicken, fish, beef and eggs that were well past
their expiration date, causing salmonella poisoning in at least one
case. Even when KBR food-service managers were notified that the food
had expired, the lawsuit states, KBR still served it. Some of the
nourishment, according to the lawsuit, “may have been contaminated with
shrapnel, or other materials.”

Which bring us to the third allegation in the lawsuit: the incinerator.

KBR “failed to properly maintain and operate the incinerator designed
to ensure the safe disposal of medical waste at Baland Air Force base,
which operated a busy front-line military hospital,” the lawsuit
states. “Instead, [KBR] merely dug an open-air burn pit and burned in
the open air hazardous medical waste and other waste not appropriate
for open air burning.”

Such items allegedly included human body parts.

Eller, a civilian sent to Iraq in February 2006 to support Air Force
troops, is the lead plaintiff in this class-action lawsuit. There are one
to 1,000 John and Jane Does also represented, and “at least an
estimated 100,000 individuals who were exposed to the actions of” KBR,
according to the lawsuit.

In addition to recurring skin lesions
and stomach pain, according to the lawsuit, Eller also continues to
have nightmares of the wild dog with an arm hanging from its mouth.

— Chris Vogel