A mass tort is a civil action involving numerous plaintiffs against one or a few corporate defendants. The tort may involve, for example, personal injuries suffered by numerous plaintiffs as a result of a defective product, or a mass disaster in which there were many injured persons, such as an airplane crash, or exposure of a large group of people to toxic chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
Doe Run is an unincorporated community in St. Francois County, Missouri. It is located on Routes W and B about six miles southwest of Farmington. This road is future Route 221. The community was founded in 1888, and was named for a nearby creek with this name, which in turn is named for the female whitetail deer. The Doe Run Company, a lead smelting operation which first originated in Doe Run, Missouri was recently featured in Blacksmith Institute's World's Worst Polluted Places because of toxic emissions generated at its current location in Herculaneum, Missouri. According to the Sierra Club, "In 2000 alone, the Doe Run Company admitted releasing more than 2.2 millions of pounds of lead into the environment, mostly to on-site piles of smelter waste and directly to the air. As a result, air, water, soil, and ultimately children's blood have become polluted with lead in the surrounding area of Jefferson County, Missouri."