Law360 (August 18, 2022, 11:22 PM EDT) -- Industrial sterilization company Sterigenics pumped excessive amounts of ethylene oxide into the air from its Willowbrook, Illinois, facility for decades without warning the community about the serious health risks of breathing in the known carcinogen, an Illinois jury heard Thursday.
Sterigenics and former parent company Griffith Foods knew since at least the early 1980s that ethylene oxide exposure posed significant cancer and reproductive health risks but fought the science studying the molecule and regulatory efforts to curb its emissions in its bid to put profits over public safety, counsel for 22-year-old Willowbrook resident Sue Kamuda told jurors during opening statements in a packed Cook County courtroom.
The "unnecessary" and excessive emission was at least part of the reason Kamuda developed an aggressive form of breast cancer, and the companies should cough up at least $20 million to compensate for her injury and suffering, her attorney, Patrick Salvi II of Salvi Schostok & Pritchard PC told the jury.
"At the end of the day, this case is simple," he said. "These companies put too much of a carcinogen into the air, it went into a woman's lungs and she got breast cancer."
Sterigenics, however, asserted the jury won't hear any evidence supporting Kamuda's allegations through the parties' several-week trial. Evidence will instead prove that the facility in the village of Willowbrook "was on the cutting edge of technology and always in compliance" with state, local and federal regulatory limits on ethylene oxide emissions, the company's attorney, Ann Marie Duffy of Hollingsworth LLP, told the jurors.
Kamuda's case is one of hundreds of personal injury suits that have been lobbed over Sterigenics' ethylene oxide emissions since 2018, when regulators began sounding the alarm about the risks residents and workers faced from their exposure to the Willowbrook facility's air pollution. It's also the first of those suits to go to trial.
The state issued a so-called "seal order" in February 2019 that effectively shut down facility operations until Sterigenics could significantly curb its toxic emissions, and although the company had settled a lawsuit from the Illinois attorney general and applied for new permits to forge a path toward reopening, the company ultimately announced the facility would stay closed given the state's "unstable legislative and regulatory landscape."
Sterigenics, formerly called Micro-Biotrol Inc., converted ethylene oxide into a gas it used to sterilize primarily medical supplies, such as syringes. The process involved shutting the products into a room and sealing it tight before releasing the colorless and odorless gas, which penetrates through boxes, wrapping and any other packaging to kill every living microorganism on the products, Salvi told the jury. The gas was released to the air primarily through a vacuum pump that removed it from the sterilization room before workers could re-enter it and move the products, Salvi told the jury.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health issued a report in 1981 identifying ethylene oxide as a suspected carcinogen, but parent company Griffith was "way ahead" of the federal agency and knew of the compound's dangers because it invented ethylene oxide sterilization and had been using the process for years before NIOSH released its report, Salvi said.
Further studies into the compound continued to reveal health risks from exposure, and even though Griffith knew of at least one detoxification plan it could have implemented for safer sterilization operations, the company never put one in place before opening the Willowbrook facility in 1984, Salvi said. Neither had Griffith conducted analyses on issues such as how far ethylene oxide would travel in the community, or how long it would stay in the air, he said.
Sterigenics, now a unit of Sotera Health, consistently underplayed its ethylene oxide use in reports to regulators so it could fly under the radar and continue making money from its toxic operation, Salvi said.
The company often changed its emission calculations depending on whether it was reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state environmental regulator, and "sometimes they would change the calculations based on nothing," he said.
Sterigenics' attorney, Duffy, urged the jury to reject Kamuda's allegations, asserting her "story" runs "directly contrary" to the evidence it will see at trial. Aside from Sterigenics' consistent compliance with regulatory emission limits, the jury will also learn that breast cancer is the most common cancer in the world, most often caused by natural errors in cell replication, she said. Kamuda won't introduce any evidence proving her cancer was uncommon or unusual, she said.
Griffith's counsel, Christopher Wilson of Perkins Coie LLP, also urged the jury to stay mindful of the companies' relationship throughout the timeline at issue. Griffith was simply Micro-Biotrol's parent company when the Willowbrook facility opened its doors and didn't emit "one drop" of ethylene oxide into the community's air in that role, he said. Griffith also sold Micro-Biotrol in 1999, so it "is entirely out of the case" by that point because the company no longer had any connection to its former subsidiary, he said.
Trial is expected to last several weeks.
Sterigenics and Sotera Health are represented by Bruce Braun, Kara McCall and Eric Mattson of Sidley Austin LLP and Ann Marie Duffy, Joe Hollingsworth, Eric Lasker and Matthew Malinowski of Hollingsworth LLP.
Griffith is represented by Christopher Wilson, Jonathan Buck, Kathleen Stetsko and Keith Klein of Perkins Coie LLP.
Kamuda is represented by Patrick A. Salvi II, Lance D. Northcutt and Jennifer M. Cascio of Salvi Schostok & Pritchard PC, Shawn Collins and Margaret Galka of The Collins Law Firm and Scott A. Entin, Roisin Duffy-Gideon and Deanna N. Pihos of Miner Barnhill & Galland PC.
The case is Sue Kamuda v. Sterigenics et al., case number 2018-L-010475, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Law Division.
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