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Cancer Hearings Wrap Up

By KEVIN P. CRAVER - kcraver@nwherald.com

Testimony from both sides wrapped up a third and final day of hearings Friday in a Philadelphia courtroom to determine whether the McCullom Lake brain-cancer class-action lawsuit can proceed.

A class-action lawsuit filed in April 2006 in U.S. District Court claims that chemical company Rohm and Haas' plant in Ringwood fouled McCullom Lake's air and groundwater with carcinogenic vinyl chloride, putting residents at an elevated risk of brain cancer. Judge Gene Pratter will rule at a future date whether to certify the lawsuit, meaning that it then would proceed to a civil trial.

"I'm very pleased with the way the arguments went, and I think we presented a very compelling case," said attorney Aaron Freiwald, who filed the lawsuit.

A decision by Pratter will not come before July 11, the deadline she gave both sides to submit post-hearing briefs.

The class-action lawsuit asks for Rohm and Haas to fund medical monitoring for current and former residents, as well as compensation for lowered property values. Although the company does not deny that its Ringwood plant has contaminated shallow groundwater, it has vigorously fought Freiwald's theory that pollution made it to village wells or sickened residents.

A message left Friday morning for Rohm and Haas attorney Ralph Wellington was not returned.

Freiwald filed the class-action lawsuit at the same time that he sued on behalf of three former McCullom Lake next-door neighbors who contracted brain cancer within eight months of one another. Those three damage lawsuits and 20 others are in Pennsylvania state court: Rohm and Haas' world headquarters is in Philadelphia.

The two years since the first lawsuits were filed have seen a flurry of expert reports numbering thousands of pages from both sides. Freiwald's experts allege that contamination from the plant made it to a deep aquifer that took it to village wells, and natural evaporation from shallow contamination tainted the air that residents breathed.

Experts commissioned by Rohm and Haas dispute those theories, as well as the idea that vinyl chloride, the carcinogen blamed in the lawsuits, even causes brain cancer.

The final expert called in the hearings Friday was Dr. Gary Ginsberg, a toxicologist testifying for Freiwald. Ginsberg's report states that the levels of vinyl chloride that other Freiwald reports claim residents ingested are sufficient to cause brain cancer.

The other two experts called during the hearings – a neuro-oncologist and an environmental public health expert – were called by Wellington to dispute plaintiffs' expert reports.

The class-action lawsuit originally included Modine Manufacturing Co., which operates a factory just south of Rohm and Haas. But Modine, while denying culpability for any illnesses, agreed to a tentative settlement earlier this year that Pratter is expected to approve Tuesday.

If approved, the settlement will pay $1.4 million toward medical monitoring and $100,000 toward property-damage relief. Modine also will settle with all 23 individual plaintiffs for undisclosed sums. Eighteen of the individual plaintiffs have brain or nerve cancer, three have pituitary tumors, and one each has liver cancer or liver cirrhosis.

Ten of the plaintiffs are dead, three of them from brain cancer since December.

What it means

Hearings over the McCullom Lake brain-cancer class-action lawsuit wrapped up Friday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The judge will rule at a future date whether to certify the lawsuit, meaning that it then would proceed to a jury trial.

On the Net

To read and watch more about the McCullom Lake brain-cancer lawsuits, visit www.NWHerald.com/mccullomlake.

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