ing up. McCarthy then asks whether he’d
be signing his job’s “death warrant” if he
wore a dust mask. At f irst, Eich blames the
pollen in the air. But after McCarthy asks
again, Eich tells him, “Don’t hang yourself
with your own cock.”
“At that point, I got something,” Scott
said. “This is damn true, and I’m taking
these cases.”
One day last February, Scott recalled
much of this to me in his current off ice,
in downtown Knoxville. He goes weeks
without stopping by the place, preferring to
work from home late at night or early in t he
morning. “I’ve got a little ADD,” he said, “so
it breaks up some monotony.” But when he
does show up, as he did that day—dressed
in an olive polo, pleated khakis, and clear
oval glasses—he tends to bounce from one
room to the next, rambling about ideas he
has for cases, University of Tennessee bas-
ketball, two-headed snakes, or whatever
else pops to mind. These days, though, Jim
Scott talks mostly about coal ash.
Since 2013, Scott has, by sheer force
of will, dragged forward a civil-action
lawsuit on behalf of now some 300 for-
mer Kingston workers. The suit alleges
that Jacobs Engineering failed to provide
a safe work environment for his clients,
with dire consequences. By Scott and
his team’s best count, nearly 40 former
Kingston workers have died as a result of
having worked at the site. And the number
looks sure to rise, with another 300 hav-
ing fallen ill. “This makes Erin Brockov-to canvass East Tennessee in his Ford
Explorer, to talk with more Kingston
workers, recruited by Clark and others. He
met them at gas stations and at Cracker
Barrels, at barbecue shacks and at a Shon-
ey’s. The workers all told him effectively the
same thing: Jacobs off icials were denying
them dust masks, not providing them with
doctors, and laying off whoever pushed
back. “After about f ive or six,” Scott said,
“I thought this might really be going on.”
When not visiting with the workers,
Scott started to dig into studies about coal
ash. He considers himself a libertarian, or
almost one anyway: “I’m not an aggres-
sive environmentalist by any stretch of
the imagination.” As such, he wanted to
rely on studies that bore no trace of “tree-
hugging.” One of the f irst that he dis-
covered was by Avner Vengosh, a Duke
University professor. In January 2009,
Vengosh had collected samples at the
Kingston spill site and concluded that the
coal ash contained arsenic, mercury, and
radium—in levels high enough to pose
health risks if airborne. And, by 2010, the
ash often was. In the summers, it would
swirl and form dust devils 60 feet tall.
One evening, not long after Scott read
the Vengosh report, a worker named Mike
McCarthy stopped by his off ice. A heavy-
set guy from Long Island, McCarthy had
suffered from chest pains, and his testos-
terone had nose-dived, as had many oth-
ers’. Having grown suspicious of T.V.A.
and Jacobs, McCarthy had started dis-
creetly f ilming videos on his cell phone.
He showed one to Scott.
In it, McCarthy approaches a Jacobs
safety supervisor named Chris Eich and
complains that his sinuses have been act-involves a trial.” But after two decades in
law, Scott had earned a reputation locally
for handling toxic-exposure suits, whether
involving nuclear fuel or E. coli.
That was how the men had found him.
Scott does not intimidate, in size or
disposition. He stands f ive-foot-eight
and has a soft, expressive face; he seldom
wears a suit when not due in court. Sitting
across a conference table from the men
that evening, he listened as they explained
that officials with Jacobs Engineering, the
construction and engineering f irm con-
tracted by T.V.A. to oversee the Kingston
cleanup, were, with few exceptions, refus-
ing them dust masks—and their jobs were
at risk if they tried to wear one anyway.
Now, the men feared, something with
their health had gone terribly wrong.
Before the spill, Clark, for one, had taken
no medications; didn’t smoke; and, beyond
work physicals, hadn’t visited a doctor in
perhaps 30 years. But in June 2012, he’d
suddenly caught the f lu, or so he assumed.
“I couldn’t breathe lying down,” he said,
“so I had to sleep sitting up because of the
wheezing in my lungs.” He felt as t hough he
were being smothered to death. That Octo-
ber, he’d visited a family doctor—who, after
running tests, advised that Clark be rushed
to the hospital. There, he was diagnosed
with congestive heart failure.
“You guys have been drinking too much
Oliver Stone Kool-Aid,” Scott recalled
thinking as he listened. He’d represented
some of the homeowners whose property
had been damaged by the Kingston spill.
But he couldn’t imagine that any organi-
zation, much less one as well-regarded as
T.V.A., would ignore requests for basic pro-
tective gear. Yet the three men had almost
no energy, and their eyes and noses were
bright red. Then there was Clark’s health.
In the coming weeks, Scott began073
A home buried in coal ash following
the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant spill.AP
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