Bartlesville is a city in Osage and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 34,748 at the 2000 census. Bartlesville is located forty-seven miles north of Tulsa and very close to Oklahoma's northern border with Kansas. It is the county seat of Washington County, in which most of the city lies. Bartlesville is notable as the longtime home of Phillips Petroleum Company, now merged with Conoco as ConocoPhillips. Frank Phillips, who has a principal street named after him (the hospital is named after his wife Jane), founded Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville in 1905 when the area was still Indian Territory. Phillips has always been the largest employer. Chiefly white-collar workers are employed by ConocoPhillips in Bartlesville, as the industrial extraction and refining work is done elsewhere in the state and throughout the world. The city has one daily newspaper and several radio stations. It is one of two places in Oklahoma where a Lenape Native American tribe lives, the other being Anadarko.

What is toxic tort law?

Toxic Tort cases involve people who have been injured through exposure to dangerous pharmaceuticals or chemical substances in the environment, on the job, or in consumer products -- including carcinogenic agents, lead, benzene, silica, harmful solvents, hazardous waste, and pesticides to name a few.

Most toxic tort cases have arisen either from exposure to pharmaceutical drugs or occupational exposures. Most pharmaceutical toxic injury cases are mass tort cases, because drugs are consumed by thousands of people, many of whom become ill from a toxic drug. There have also been many occupational toxic tort cases, because industrial and other workers are often chronically exposed to toxic chemicals - more so than consumers and residents. Most of the law in this area arises from asbestos exposure, but thousands of toxic chemicals are used in industry and workers in these areas can experience a variety of toxic injuries. Unlike the general population, which is exposed to trace amounts of thousands of different chemicals in the environment, industrial workers are regularly exposed to much higher levels of chemicals and therefore have a greater risk of developing disease from particular chemical exposures than the general population. The home has recently become the subject of toxic tort litigation, mostly due to mold contamination, but also due to construction materials such as formaldehyde-treated wood and carpet. Toxic tort cases also arise when people are exposed to consumer products such as pesticides and suffer injury. Lastly, people can also be injured from environmental toxins in the air or in drinking water.

Answers to toxic tort law issues in Oklahoma

In certain kinds of cases, lawyers charge what is called a contingency fee. Instead of billing by the hour, the...

Because of the health problems caused by lead poisoning, the federal Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction...

Property owners may be liable for tenant health problems caused by exposure to environmental hazards, such as...

In general, mass tort cases involve a large number of individual claimants with claims associated with a single...