Headlines
Liver Damage New Complaint in McCullom Lake Lawsuit
06/08/2007
BY KEVIN P. CRAVER
RESIDENT: "IT ISN'T A FLUKE"
Irene Suchor felt sick to her stomach seven years ago and hurried to the bathroom of her McCullom Lake home.
She made it to the kitchen before she started throwing up blood, and her husband called an ambulance after finding her passed out from blood loss. Doctors diagnosed her with advanced cirrhosis, but could not determine a cause – Suchor does not drink, and has never contracted hepatitis, the two most common causes.
Seven years and a liver transplant later, Suchor, 69, now blames groundwater contamination from three Ringwood manufacturers that a Philadelphia attorney has sued on behalf of 17 other people.
"It’s a thought. There is no other way to explain it," Suchor said. "[Doctors] were all kind of baffled, and I’ve seen several specialists, so it isn’t a fluke."
But her lawsuit, filed Thursday in a Philadelphia court, is unique among the 18 filed against the manufacturers. The other lawsuits are from people who claim that they contracted brain and nerve cancers from contaminated groundwater.
"The significance here is we have been focusing, I believe appropriately, on this extraordinary cluster of brain cancers," said Aaron Freiwald, attorney for the 18 plaintiffs. "But we also know that the chemicals, which we are prepared to prove reached McCullom Lake village over a significant period of time, also caused significant liver damage."
The suits, filed since April 2006, accuse Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas, subsidiary Morton International, and Racine, Wis.-based Modine Manufacturing Co., of polluting groundwater with carcinogenic vinyl chlorides over decades. Freiwald also claims that an air-stripping system installed in 1991 to remove contaminants from groundwater shot them into the air for people to breathe.
While Rohm and Haas has acknowledged the contamination, which came from an on-site landfill and several spills, their maps show that the plume never touched the village, company attorney Ralph Wellington said. The town’s 1,000 or so residents use private wells.
"You can’t read any complaint about someone with a serious illness and not feel for them. That’s natural human nature," Wellington said. "But there simply is no connection between the operations of the Rohm and Haas plant and any of the 18 or so illnesses in these complaints in McCullom Lake village."
Wellington also expressed concern that a case of cirrhosis is being linked to the contamination. Most of the other cases have been brain cancers such as glioblastoma, and the rarer but more survivable oligodendroglioma and hemangioblastoma.
"What’s troubling is that this seems to open a new approach for counsel, which has to beg the question – is every serious illness in McCullom Lake village going to be laid at the feet of Rohm and Haas? I hope not," Wellington said.
Modine spokeswoman Wendy Wilson declined comment because the company had not yet seen the lawsuit.
Freiwald denied the notion that he was making a leap in Suchor’s case. He said vinyl chlorides are well-known in medical literature to be harmful to the liver, the organ responsible for detoxifying blood. Freiwald said no other cases of cirrhosis have yet come to his attention.
"If I said my hangnail is related [to the contamination], sure, there clearly are things that are going to be very difficult to prove. But anyone looking at the scientific and government literature, and frankly even the defendants’ own admissions in this case, would see a link to liver damage."
Suchor, who has lived in the village since 1969, has links to other sickened plaintiffs. She lives across the street from plaintiff Julianna Mass, who was diagnosed in November with glioblastoma multiforme. Mass, 68, has lived in McCullom Lake for more than 40 years. Suchor’s five children and Mass’ seven children grew up together.
Suchor said she is thankful that she was stricken with cirrhosis and not brain cancer.
"I’m going to be 70. I take it one day at a time, but I’m healthy enough right now to keep functioning. I have to be thankful for that," Suchor said. "It’s just kind of rare that so many people in the village have that brain cancer. It’s not an isolated case."
Suchor’s husband, Ronald, died in January of lung and brain cancer, but is not a plaintiff in the suit because his lung cancer spread to his brain, Suchor said.