Richard J. Daley Center, Chicago
CHICAGO - A chemical company with a manufacturing plant in north suburban Gurnee has become the latest to settle hundreds of lawsuits claiming emissions from its manufacturing process caused people living nearby to develop cancer.
On Sept. 19, Cook County Circuit Judge Kathy M. Flanagan agreed to dismiss 440 lawsuits against Vantage Specialty Chemicals Inc., all of which sought to make the company pay for its alleged release of harmful ethylene oxide (EtO) gas into the air over decades of operations in Lake County.
According to Flanagan's order, the dismissals are the result of a settlement reached between Vantage and the plaintiffs' legal team. According to the order, the terms of that settlement are confidential.
Neither Vantage nor the plaintiffs' lawyers announced the deal.
Vantage is a privately owned corporation and does not discuss its revenue publicly in government filing or reports to investors.
The apparent completion of the Vantage settlement comes about two months since another company, medical device distributor Steris announced it had agreed to pay $48 million to end about 275 lawsuits against Steris' subsidiary, Isomedix.
The claims against Vantage and Steris Isomedix all centered on claims from hundreds of plaintiffs that EtO emissions from their facilities in Lake County had caused people living and working nearby to develop cancer.
The lawsuits against Vantage were some of the first to be filed against Lake County companies in 2019. They followed swiftly on the heels of headline-grabbing claims against a different medical device sterilization company, Sterigenics, which operated a plant in west suburban Willowbrook in Cook County.
EtO is used widely in various industries, including many in the Chicago area. In manufacturing, EtO serves as a key chemical building block ingredient for a wide range of products, including antifreeze, recyclable packaging and nearly all products containing fiberglass. Derivatives of EtO are also used to make shampoo and other personal care items, as well as some pharmaceuticals.
According to its site, Vantage's Gurnee factory produces a variety of chemicals used in nearly all of those industries.
EtO has also been widely used by companies like Steris, Sterigenics and medical device manufacturer and distributor Medline 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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
In addition to Vantage and Steris Isomedix, the lawsuits have also targeted Waukegan-based Medline. Other defendants have since been added to the litigation, including BASF Corporation, PPG Industries, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie Inc.
According to court documents, Medline has reached a settlement to resolve hundreds of cases it faces. However, that settlement remains the subject of a court action between Medline and its insurance providers over how much of the settlement will need to be paid by the insurers.
In late 2024, Vantage and attorneys for the Lake County EtO plaintiffs also reached a settlement, just weeks before the first Lake County EtO cases were set to go to trial, according to a brief filed in early September jointly by attorneys for Vantage and the plaintiffs in support of the settlement.
According to that filing, Vantage is obligated to pay 45% of the settlement funds itself. The remainder would be paid by insurance. But how much the insurers pay is also the subject of litigation between Vantage and its insurers, according to the document.
In January, Steris Isomedix took the claims against it to trial. That trial ended in a mistrial over jury issues.
In a post published by the law firm Jones Day, the attorneys from that firm who represented Steris at trial said surveys of the jurors after trial revealed jurors were prepared to find in favor of the defendants against the claims that their EtO emissions had caused that plaintiff's cancer.
Steris, Vantage and the other defendants have steadfastly denied claims of a clear link between their EtO emissions and cancer among those living nearby.
In court filings as far back as 2020, for instance, Vantage specifically noted its emissions never rose above levels considered safe and legal by federal and state environmental regulators. The company said the "mere fact that Vantage operated a facility using EtO" shouldn't be enough to tag the company for potentially massive damages.
The company ultimately decided to settle, however, rather than take its defense to trial.
Meanwhile, as the original Lake County EtO defendants exit the litigation, proceedings continue to ramp up against the newer remaining corporate defendants.
According to court documents, those companies were tagged as new defendants in the actions as recently as late 2024.
According to an August filing, the companies are seeking to force the plaintiffs to hand over all discovery completed to this point, rather than to force the defendants to start from a new beginning.
Some of the new defendants have also sought to dismiss or transfer the cases, as well, according to the August filing.
Plaintiffs in the Lake County EtO proceedings have been represented by attorneys Nicholas Rosinia, Amy B. Hausmann, Todd Logan and Brandt Silverkorn, of the firm of Edelson P.C., of Chicago and San Francisco; Gregory Dovel and Julien Adams, of the firm of Dovel & Luner, of Santa Monica, California; and Bryce T. Hensley, of Stinar Gould Grieco & Hensley, of Chicago.
Vantage has been represented by attorneys Brenton A. Rogers and Brendan E. Ryan, of the firm of Kirkland & Ellis, of Chicago.
