In the last two weeks, two class action lawsuits against the J.H. Baxter company have been reclassified as civil suits. Both filed in the spring of 2021, they stemmed from noxious odors and dioxins from its now-shuttered Eugene plant.
The lawsuits essentially charged that emissions from J.H. Baxter’s wood treatment plant threatened the well-being of Bethel-area residents and their properties. The roughly 80-year-old facility had long been the target of complaints, investigations, fines and concerns before permanently closing four years ago.
On January 29, U.S. District of Oregon Judge Ann Aiken granted a motion to decertify the case, Bell-Alanis v. J.H. Baxter. This essentially reduces the number of plaintiffs from potentially thousands of people to the four originally listed when the case was filed in June 2021. The amount of damages sought then was $750,000.
Then on February 6, another district judge, Mustafa Kasubhai, ordered the decertification of the second class action suit, Hart v. J.H. Baxter, leaving two originally-listed people as plaintiffs back when the case was filed in April 2021.
No damages were specified in the initial filing.
In October, both cases were deemed settled. But one attorney told KLCC that the details were confidential, and hinted strongly that any settlement reached would be disappointing to plaintiffs.
In both motions to decertify the cases, J.H. Baxter was deemed incapable of satisfying a class judgment for financial damages, and therefore any class level settlement wouldn’t be able to be “fairly and efficiently administered.” This also implies that any damages eventually awarded with the lawsuits may amount to little, if anything.
An attorney working on Hart vs. J.H. Baxter, Laura Sheets, said her plaintiffs’ claims deserved a different outcome.
“Unfortunately, the facts have borne out that that's not a possibility, that this company is insolvent,” said Sheets. “And we're going to hope and rely on the Superfund designation to hopefully bring some relief to the immediate neighborhood and for the remaining residents in the area.
“They hopefully have some consolation that this facility is no longer operating,”she said.
Since shutting down, the J.H. Baxter plant has undergone extensive cleaning and deconstruction by crews working for the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In July 2025, the EPA listed the facility as a Superfund site, which allows millions of federal dollars to be allocated towards its cleanup and restoration.
Company president Georgia Baxter-Krause was sentenced to 90 days last year after pleading guilty to violating several federal environmental laws and then lying to regulators about it. She was incarcerated at a federal penitentiary in the Seattle area, and a Bureau of Prisons record shows that she was released ten days earlier than scheduled in December. The BOP has not yet responded to KLCC’s inquiry about why Baxter-Krause was discharged early.
The decertification of the two lawsuits also leaves open the possibility of other legal actions against J.H. Baxter, though with its assets appearing largely reduced to a few contaminated properties, any potential for a sizable settlement appears unlikely.
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