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Cancer Payoff Plotted

By KEVIN P. CRAVER
kcraver@nwherald.com

McCullom Lake residents now can access instructions on how to participate in a settlement with one of the defendants in a class-action brain-cancer lawsuit.

Two Web sites and a toll-free telephone number have been set up to give information to people eligible to receive compensation for either medical monitoring or property-value relief. Although Modine Manufacturing Co. denies a connection between pollution from its Ringwood plant and a rash of brain and nerve cancers, the company tentatively has agreed to pay $2 million to settle the case.

Visit www.mccullomlakesettle ment.com or www.hrsclaimsadministration.com for information, or call 1-800-528-7199. Mailers went out Thursday to households and businesses in the village limits, said attorney Aaron Freiwald, who sued the company and neighboring Rohm and Haas in 2006.

"I’m hearing from a lot of people," Freiwald said. "People are very interested in going through these materials, and I hope they’ll put in for the relief that’s there.

"It’s a good feeling to have come to this point, but there’s still a lot of work to do."

Rohm and Haas still is fighting in court – corporate spokesmen and legal counsel said that settling the case was not an option.

The class-action lawsuit alleges that decades of groundwater and air contamination from the Modine and the Rohm and Haas plants, formerly owned by Morton International, afflicted residents with brain cancer through exposure to vinyl chloride. Freiwald also sued the companies on behalf of 23 people or their next of kin who blame their brain cancers or other illnesses on the pollution.

In the settlement, plaintiffs’ counsel stated that Modine is a minimal contributor to the pollution that Morton/Rohm and Haas began reporting to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in 1983.

Under the tentative settlement, Morton will pay $1.4 million toward medical monitoring to help reimburse residents, up to $1,400, who want an MRI. Eligible people must have lived in village limits for at least one cumulative year between Jan. 1, 1968, and Dec. 31, 2002.

Another $100,000 will establish a fund to reimburse property owners up to $1,000. Residents eligible for compensation had to have owned property in the village since April 25, 2006, the date that the first lawsuits were filed.

The remaining $500,000 will pay for court costs and implementing the settlement.

Any claim must be postmarked no later than July 24, a month after a U.S. District Court judge is expected to approve the settlement. Anyone wanting to exclude themselves from the settlement to retain the right to sue Modine over the legal issues in the case must mail their request no later than May 19.

Newspaper advertisements also are being used to help inform former McCullom Lake residents who have moved elsewhere. Two appeared in the Northwest Herald, and one each in Chicago’s two major daily newspapers.

Modine is settling with all 23 individual plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum. Eighteen of the lawsuits are on behalf of people with brain or nerve cancer. Three of the cases are pituitary cancers; and one each are liver cancer and cirrhosis of the liver.

Nine of the plaintiffs are dead, seven of them from glioblastoma multiforme, a deadly brain cancer than afflicts slightly more than three people per 100,000.

Racine, Wis.-based Modine, which reported $1.7 billion in revenue last year, has operated its Ringwood plant since 1961, where it manufactures cooling modules, condensers and oil coolers. Modine began an investigation into potential contamination in 1990, which concluded that a disposal pit and two underground storage tanks had leaked into groundwater.

On the Web

Read more about the settlement at www.mccullomlakesettlement.com or www.hrsclaimsadministration.com or call 1-800-528-7199 for more information.

Visit NWHerald.com/mccullomlake to read and watch the Northwest Herald’s six-part investigation into the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits.

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