The Associated Press, from Miami, has reported that a widow has settled her long-running lawsuit with the U.S. government over their responsibility for the wrongful death of her spouse in a 2001 anthrax-poisoning scheme.
The deceased, R.S., a tabloid photo editor, was the first victim of the anthrax-laden letters that eventually killed five people and sickened 17 more.
M.S., of Lake Worth, Florida, cited the government with failure to stop a person working at an Army infectious lab from making a weapons-grade strength anthrax - with the sole intention of killing and making others ill.
The agreement is tentative and not yet disclosed - though M.S. originally asked for $50 million in damages when the lawsuit was filed in 2003.
Richard Shuler represents M.S. Neither attorney nor client answered queries for comments put to them by members of the press.
The trial was due to be heard early next year, with arguments scheduled for the second week of November.
R.S. died on October 5, 2001 after he was exposed to anthrax as his workplace - the Boca Raton offices of the American Media Inc.
The government argued, per court documents, that there was a lack of proof to hold them accountable for inadequate security or precautions that led up to R.S.'s death.
Also alleged in the claim was that the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases had a history - dating back to 1992 in Detrick, Maryland - of missing pathogens and failing to track dangerous microbes.
By 2010 the FBI determined that Dr. B.I. was alone in staging the 2001 anthrax campaign that sent the poisonous envelopes to locations - including a Senate office building - to Florida, New York and Washington D.C.
Just as the investigations was drawing to a close, Dr. B.I. committed suicide. Since his death there have been new documents filed that suggest that Dr. B.I., the chief of bacteriology from 1998 to 2000 in the biodefense lab, "did not have the lab skills to make the fine powdered anthrax used in the letters."
Investigators also thought it near impossible for B.I. to do the work at night and remain undetected.
The man that followed Dr. B.I. as the new chief of bacteriology, G.A., said it should have taken B.I. six months, up to a year, to refine anthrax spores, and not the 20 hours that the FBI had reported.
G.A. also told lawyers that B.I. simply did not have the expertise, or the machinery, required to pull off the task by himself.
A former Ford Detrick scientist and a "person of interest" in a 2001 investigation, S.H., was paid $5.8 million by the U.S. government when they were found guilty of violating his privacy after he was cleared.
If you think that your loved one paid for someone else's crimes with their life, you have grounds for a wrongful death lawsuit. Contact a personal injury lawyer to hear what you have to say!