Jury awards Illinois woman $363M in suit over plant’s gas

CHICAGO — A jury has awarded $363 million to a girl who alleged {that a} now-shuttered suburban Chicago plant that sterilized medical tools uncovered residents to a poisonous industrial gasoline and gave her breast most cancers.

After a five-week trial, the Cook dinner County jurors on Monday awarded Sue Kamuda $38 million in compensatory damages for the previous and future lack of a standard life, emotional misery, disfigurement and shortened life expectancy, and $325 million in punitive damages.

Kamuda, 70, developed breast most cancers in 2007 regardless of having no predisposition to it, her legal professionals mentioned. She is the primary of greater than 700 individuals in search of damages from Oak Brook, Illinois-based Sterigenics to go to trial over well being claims over the plant’s releases of ethylene oxide gasoline.

These lawsuits have been filed in opposition to Sterigenics since 2018, when the U.S. Environmental Safety Company printed analysis displaying individuals dwelling close to the plant within the DuPage County village of Willowbrook confronted a number of the nation’s highest most cancers dangers from poisonous air air pollution.

Sterigenics, the previous plant’s most up-to-date proprietor, was ordered to pay Kamuda $220 million in punitive damages; mum or dad firm Sotera Well being was directed to pay $100 million and Griffith Meals, the present identify of the plant’s authentic proprietor, $5 million.

Monday’s verdict exceeded the $346 million Kamuda’s legal professionals sought in closing arguments final Thursday in opposition to Sterigenics.

“It was such a reduction,” Kamuda mentioned of the decision. The retired faculty administrator advised reporters considered one of her sons has been identified with most cancers and has filed his personal lawsuit in opposition to the corporate.

Attorneys for the businesses argued that Kamuda’s attorneys provided no proof that her breast most cancers was brought on by publicity to ethylene oxide, an odorless gasoline pumped into fumigation chambers contained in the sterilization plant after which launched into surrounding neighborhoods.

The businesses additionally introduced in industry-connected scientists who tried to steer jurors the plant by no means posed a hazard to its neighbors, the Chicago Solar-Occasions reported.

Emails and paperwork offered through the trial confirmed the businesses knew way back that ethylene oxide is extraordinarily harmful, however delayed putting in pollution-control tools. The paperwork additionally confirmed the businesses tried to undermine federal laws that will require expensive enhancements at sterilization services, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The plant had been releasing ethylene oxide from 1985 till it was briefly shut down by the state in 2019 after authorities detected the gasoline close by. Amid public strain, Sterigenics closed the plant completely later that yr.

Patrick Salvi Jr., considered one of Kamuda’s attorneys, mentioned Monday’s verdict doubtless will have an effect on rulings in different lawsuits.

“We predict this must set the tone. There’s quite a lot of victims on the market,” he mentioned.

Sterigenics and Sotera mentioned in a press release they may enchantment the decision, saying it doesn’t mirror the proof offered in court docket.

“We are going to proceed to vigorously defend in opposition to allegations about our ethylene oxide operations and emissions,” the businesses mentioned.

“As we’ve persistently completed all through our historical past, we are going to proceed to function in compliance with relevant guidelines and laws to make sure the security of our workers, the communities during which we function and sufferers all over the world.”

Griffith Meals, an Alsip, Illinois firm, mentioned the lawsuit was a “case of overreach” by the plaintiff’s legal professionals. The corporate mentioned it hasn’t been related to Sterigenics in over 20 years.