A group of sailor who were onboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan as it delivered aid in the results of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in Japan nearly three years ago are taking another shot at a lawsuit over the health issues they say they have suffered since their radiation exposure.

Their lawyer, California environmental law expert Paul C. Garner, has until January 6 to change their complaint against the Tokyo Electric Power Co. and resubmit it for a judge’s ruling.

“What we say is this: The TEPCO people realized what was happening there,” Garner told Navy Times. “They knew the degree of what was happening, because now you have radiological releases into the environment ... and the tsunami just cleaned it all in, and washed it all-out, and the Reagan was in the backwash.”

Garner originally presented the case a year ago. A federal judge in Southern California granted the company’s November 26 motion to disregard the case, but Garner and the sailors will have another opportunity, he told Navy Times.

Garner made the decision to drop some of the accusations in the lawsuit, with a conspiracy charge, and said the judge would reevaluate the case in the New Year.