May 18, 1979
A jury in a federal court in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee established a company’s responsibility for damage to the health of a worker in the nuclear industry. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant where plutonium was manufactured and had suffered radiation exposure. The jury awarded her estate $505,000 in actual damages, and $10 million punitive damages. She had died in a car accident on her way to a meeting with a The New York Times reporter five years earlier.
