Richard J. Daley Center, Chicago
CHICAGO - Pharmaceutical and medical device maker Baxter Healthcare has reportedly agreed to settle at least 38 lawsuits accusing the company over emissions which allegedly caused cancer in people living near its manufacturing and distribution facility in suburban Round Lake.
Attorneys from the firm of Edelson P.C., of Chicago, revealed the settlement in motions filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
Baxter is among a growing group of companies targeted in Cook County court over emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO) from manufacturing plants and medical device sterilization facilities in communities in Lake County in Chicago's north suburbs.
The lawsuits against Baxter were lodged beginning in 2025, as part of a wave of new lawsuits filed against companies accused of operating industrial facilities, either currently or in the past, blamed for allegedly harmful EtO emissions in the region.
Those new lawsuits came even as some of the same plaintiffs, represented by Edelson, were wrapping up settlements to resolve hundreds of legal claims filed years ago against other companies that used EtO in their manufacturing and distribution processes.
Companies reaching such settlements have included Vantage Specialty Chemicals, Medline, and Steris, on behalf of its subsidiary, Isomedix.
Only the Steris Isomedix settlement has been publicly discussed, as the company indicated it would pay $48 milion to resolve the litigation.
However, those settlements themselves followed notable settlements with medical device sterilizer Sterigenics and Griffith Foods over EtO personal injury lawsuits related to emissions from a medical device sterilization plant in west suburban Willowbrook in Cook County.
Under those deals, Sterigenics agreed to pay $408 million to settle more than 870 lawsuits.
And Griffith Foods, which had operated the Willowbrook plant in the 1980s, agreed to pay $48 million.
EtO has also been widely used by companies like Steris, Sterigenics and other medical device manufacturer and distributors to sterilize a wide variety of medical devices and tools, including surgical implants like pacemakers and catheters, as well as surgical instruments.
Medical device makers have said EtO is all but essential to ensuring patient safety and preventing deadly infections in patients undergoing surgeries in operating rooms.
EtO is also used in a variety of other industrial settings, including as a building block chemical for a host of consumer products and to sterilize spices and some other food products, making them safe for human consumption.
Because of its widespread use, EtO is present in the ambient air throughout much of the Chicago region, according to air pollution measurements conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Nonetheless, companies in the Chicago area and elsewhere have been targeted in recent years by lawsuits from trial lawyers seeking big payouts and relying on government reports indicating long exposure to EtO could increase people's risk of contracting cancer.
Collectively, Illinois EtO settlements have been estimated to generate more than $700 million for plaintiffs and the trial lawyers who have in many cases recruited plaintiffs for the lawsuits.
As they neared settlements with the initial group of Lake County defendants, plaintiffs moved to expand their lawsuits further, targeting additional companies.
That maneuver followed the playbook set in the litigation against Sterigenics, where plaintiffs' lawyers added Griffith Foods to the litigation.
Beginning in late 2024, the Edelson attorneys lodged hundreds of suits against a group of additional defendants, including Baxter, AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories, PPG Industries and BASF Corporation.
Those defendants, excluding Baxter, have pushed back against those lawsuits, claiming the plaintiffs either waited far too long to sue them or engaged in other unfair procedural tactics to tee up the lawsuits.
While that dispute remains pending, Baxter appears to have settled the claims against it.
On Jan. 16, Edelson attorneys filed motions in Cook County Circuit Court asking a judge to appoint an administrator for two settlements.
One such motion involved the already publicly known Isomedix settlement.
But the other concerned a settlement with Baxter. The motion indicated the settlement would resolve 38 lawsuits against Baxter.
The motions, however, blacked out the potential gross settlement amounts for both Baxter and Isomedix. In a separate motion concerning the redactions, Edelson essentially asserted the settlement amount is none of the public's business, at least at this point.
"... Because no individual Plaintiff’s settlement is yet finalized under the Baxter and Isomedix settlement programs, the group settlement amounts are likewise not yet final; disclosing these potential gross sums serves no public purpose," Edelson wrote in that motion.
Baxter did not respond to questions submitted by The Cook County Record and Legal Newsline.
