A federal judge is considering whether a lawsuit filed by 13 former Plutonium Finishing Plant workers should be sent to a mediator, and whether the suit should be dismissed against Kadlec Medical Center and an emergency room doctor.

In a Friday hearing, U.S. District Judge Ed Shea said that the mediation decision might depend on whether an appropriate mediator is free to hear the case.

The plaintiffs want a mediator, while the defense believes it is premature to go to mediation.

Shea expects to rule on Kadlec's and the doctor's dismissal motions in about a week.

Thirteen current and former Hanford employees are suing Fluor Hanford, some subcontractors, Kadlec Medical Center and emergency room physician Dr. John Smith over numerous mistakes made before and after a PFP chemical tank exploded May 14, 1997, according to court documents. The explosion exposed the workers to chemical fumes, possibly tainted with radioactivity.

Filed in 2000, the lawsuits say Fluor and others allowed the explosion to occur, botched the emergency responses, and delayed medical checks on the victims.

The victims say they have suffered recurring skin rashes, lung and throat problems, blood abnormalities, post-traumatic stress disorder and some other ailments because of the fumes and delayed medical checks.

On Friday, attorneys for Kadlec and Smith argued that their clients should be dropped as defendants.

Plaintiffs' attorney Todd Johnson and Scott Johnson argued otherwise.

Shea said he needs to review the deposition of one of the plaintiffs' medical experts before making his ruling.

When the victims were sent to Kadlec on the night of May 14, 1997, they asked that the emergency room workers take blood, urine and fecal samples from them because they were worried about being exposed to chemical fumes.

Emergency room workers did not take those samples because the physical exams indicated they were not needed, the defense attorneys argued.

Also, despite having a room permanently set up in 1997 to deal with nuclear-related accidents, the victims were not given showers at Kadlec. Showers are a common Hanford procedure for washing off contaminants in the immediate aftermath of an accident.

There is no evidence that Kadlec had protocols written up in 1997 to deal with Hanford waste-related accident victims brought to its emergency room, attorneys for both sides said. However, Kadlec has those protocols in place now, said Jim Hall, hospital spokesman.

King and Hailey argued that in 1997, no hospital in Washington was legally required to have protocols for dealing with radioactive material accidents, and that the University of Washington's hospital was the only one in the state that had protocols for dealing with hazardous wastes accidents.

Shea noted that Kadlec, unlike the rest of the state's hospitals, is next to a highly contaminated nuclear cleanup site, which might call for having protocols written up for radioactive accidents.

Hailey and King contended that Kadlec and Smith should not be held to higher legal standards than faced by the rest of the state's emergency rooms.

Also, Kadlec did not have a formally written agreement with Hanford on providing care for the site's radiation and chemical accident victims until 1998, they said.

Plaintiffs' attorney Todd Johnson argued that Kadlec had decontamination equipment available in its room set aside for nuclear-related emergencies, but did not use it that night.

Todd Johnson also argued that blood, fecal and urine samples should have been taken that night to start accurately tracking any chemicals or radioactive substances that the victims may have inhaled or absorbed. The first such tests were given 42 hours later at the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation.

"Nobody ever cared about these individuals from the get-go, and about what could be done for them. ... These people are in terrible shape because, even today, they don't know what they were exposed to," Johnson said.

In the late 1990s, the state fined the Department of Energy, Fluor and a subcontractor $110,000 for safety violations that caused the explosion. And DOE fined Fluor $28,500 for the botched emergency response. The explosion led to a massive overhaul of Hanford's chemical management and emergency procedures.