Richard J. Daley Center, Chicago
CHICAGO - A Cook County judge has allowed medical device sterilization company Steris to end hundreds of lawsuits over claims emissions from a Waukegan plant operated by Steris subsidiary Isomedix caused people living nearby to develop cancer.
In July, Cook County Circuit Judge Kathy M. Flanagan ordered dismissal of claims against Isomedix pending in her court.
That order came a little less than a month since attorneys for Steris and plaintiffs had entered a joint stipulation in court confirming the parties had reached a settlement to end the litigation.
Neither the stipulation nor the judge's order discussed any of the specifics of the settlement deal.
However, in March, Steris had announced in a release that it had agreed to pay as much as $48 million to settle "the majority of personal injury claims related to ethylene oxide emissions currently pending" in Cook County court.
According to that release, the settlement would be binding and otherwise confidential.
Steris has repeatedly denied the claims in the lawsuits.
The announcement of the deal in March came shortly after an Illinois state appeals court rejected a bid by Steris to delay a new trial over the claims brought by a 70-year-old woman who accused the company of having a role in causing her to develop cancer.
The woman, identified as Pamela Knobbe, had been the first of 275 plaintiffs to bring her claims against Isomedix to trial last fall.
Knobbe's complaint is similar to nearly all of the other cases, as she claims she developed breast cancer as a result of breathing air allegedly contaminated by elevated levels of the chemical compound known as EtO allegedly caused by emissions from industrial facilities, including medical device sterilization plants, within a few miles of her home.
The lawsuits involving Isomedix also involved several other Lake County area companies known to have used EtO in either sterilization plants or other industrial settings for decades.
Other defendants named in Knobbe's complaint and those of hundreds of others filed in Cook County court include medical device maker and sterilizer Medline; medical device maker Cosmed; and specialty chemical company Vantage. All of the defendants operated plants utilizing EtO in and around Waukegan.
EtO is used widely in various industries, including many in operation in the Chicago area. In manufacturing, EtO serves as a key building block ingredient for a wide range of products, including antifreeze, recyclable packaging and nearly all products containing fiberglass. Derivatives of EtO area also used to make shampoo and other personal care items, as well as some pharmaceuticals.
Isomedix and other medical device sterilizers have used EtO to sterilize a wide variety of medical devices and tools, including surgical implants, like pacemakers and catheters, to ensure the do not increase patients' risk of deadly infections in the operating room.
Medical device makers have said EtO is all but essential to ensuring patient safety and preventing deadly infections in surgical patients.
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.
Companies in the Chicago area and elsewhere, however, increasingly have been targeted in recent years for 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.
In Illinois, the anti-ETO effort began when activists and trial lawyers targeted sterilization company Sterigenics, which operated a sterilization plant in west suburban Willowbrook.
The activists succeeded in persuading state officials to take action against Sterigenics and rewrite Illinois' pollution rules to impose severe limits on EtO emissions, ultimately forcing Sterigenics to pull out of Illinois, even though the company had to that point never violated state or federal EtO emissions limits.
Sterigenics ultimately agreed to pay $408 million to settle more than 870 lawsuits on behalf of people who lived in and around Willowbrook, who claimed that company's EtO emissions had caused cancer.
Another company, Griffith Foods, which formerly operated the Willowbrook sterilization plant, also agreed to pay $48 million to settle claims against them.
Those settlements came after two cases against Sterigenics went to trial. In the first trial, a jury ordered Sterigenics to pay a woman $363 million. In the second trial, however, a jury sided with Sterigenics, declaring the company shouldn't be liable for a different woman's illness.
Nationally, EtO-related actions have resulted in settlements estimated to be worth more than $700 million collectively, according to some published estimates.
Meanwhile, the separate Lake County-related legal actions have continued in Cook County court.
Knobbe's trial, however, ended in a mistrial in January over jury issues.
According to a post published by law firm Jones Day, which represented Steris Isomedix in the litigation, the mistrial was declared after "one juror walked out of deliberations and the plaintiff (Knobbe) refused to waive her right to a 12-member jury."
Jones Day, however, said post-trial interviews of the jurors revealed the jury was about to side with Steris Isomedix. Jones Day said "the remaining jurors were 10-1 in Isomedix's favor at the time of the mistrial."
Throughout the process, Isomedix has contested the claims brought by Knobbe and other plaintiffs. They have argued, similarly to Sterigenics, that the levels of EtO its plant may have emitted fell within ranges permitted by state and federal authorities.
Further, they argued plaintiffs cannot scientifically support their claims against the company, pointing to evidence indicating atmospheric EtO levels were too low to produce the catastrophic effects alleged by patients.
Jones Day said the results of the Knobbe trial led to the settlement.
"Having demonstrated that it could and would successfully fight through trial, Isomedix subsequently entered into favorable global term sheets to create a settlement structure anticipated to resolve substantially all remaining ethylene oxide cases against it," Jones Day said.
The firm further said it had negotiated "individual settlements of all trial-set cases, resulting in settlement amounts for trial-set cases as low as $50,000."
In the stipulation of dismissal filed June 9, the plaintiffs' attorneys said the Isomedix settlement only addresses claims against Steris, through Isomedix.
Medline and Vantage have each agreed to settle the claims against them.
The stipulation stated that claims against Isomedix's co-defendant Cosmed would continue, pending the results of proceedings in Cosmed's bankruptcy case, which are continuing in federal bankruptcy court in Texas.
Cosmed had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reorganize in the fall of 2024, as the company sought to address the barrage of lawsuits filed against it, stemming from the EtO emissions from its plants in Lake County and elsewhere.
In her order, Judge Flanagan stayed the cases against Cosmed while the company remained in bankruptcy court.
Knobbe and other plaintiffs have been represented by attorney Amy B. Hausmann and others with the firm of Edleson PC, of Chicago and San Francisco.
Steris Isomedix has been represented by attorneys Philip M. Oliss and Erica E. Duff, of the firm of Jones Day, of Chicago and Cleveland, Ohio.
