Toxic Torts

The attorneys at Layser & Freiwald have experience handling cases involving health effects from environmental waste and exposures to toxic chemicals and other substances.

• The firm represents  two dozen individuals, all residents or former residents in a lakeside residential community in Northwestern Illinois, who have contracted brain cancer or brain tumors due to toxic chemical releases at nearby chemical and industrial manufacturing facilities. The individual cancer cases seek compensatory and punitive damages against Rohm and Haas Chemical Company (formerly Morton Chemical), for decades of dumping chemical toxins, into the soil, air and groundwater just uphill and upstream from plaintiffs’ homes. The firm also has filed a Class Action, seeking medical monitoring and damages for property loss and other expenses, on behalf of all the other residents of the community, McCullom Lake Village, because of the decades of exposure and the obviously increased incidence of brain cancer.

• Mr. Freiwald achieved a settlement with Modine Manufacturing Company regarding the McCullom Lake litigation.  Modine settled with each of the individual brain cancer and brain tumor victims and also paid $2 million towards the medical monitoring/property class action.  The U.S. District Court approved the settlement, paving the way for these funds to be used by hundreds of McCullom Lake residents to obtain medical screening for brain cancer and brain tumors.  A copy of the Court's Order granting final approval to the Modine settlement can be found here.

• The firm has filed a Class Action for medical monitoring against Philadelphia-based Rohm and Haas because of 12 malignant brain cancers among employees of the chemical giant’s Spring House, Pennsylvania research facility. The firm has also filed individual claims on behalf of two research chemists who worked for many years at the Spring House facility. This litigation is pending.

• The firm has a growing practice in representing children who have suffered the devastating effects of lead paint poisoning. The firm is handling dozens of lead poisoning claims in New Jersey. These claims require expertise in all phases of litigation from the investigative phase, when determining the identity of the landlord and the existence of coverage and assets is essential, through to the time of trial. Because these cases often involve severe neurologic injuries, including brain injury, learning deficits and related medical conditions, the experience Layser & Freiwald attorneys bring to these cases is vital to the success of these actions.