Ringwood Illinois Cancer Cases

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Three Next-Door Neighbors, All With Malignant Brain Cancer, Lead To
Lawsuits Against Rohm and Haas Company, Huntsman and Modine Manufacturing Co.

Three men lived in homes side by side in a small, lakeside residential development in Northern Illinois, McCullom Lake Village. All three developed malignant brain cancer in a period of a few months. Recognizing that three brain cancers all in a row could not be coincidence, they hired partner Aaron Freiwald to investigate.

The result: On April 25, 2006, Freiwald filed a civil action in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on behalf of two of the neighbors, Bryan Feund and Kurt Weisenberger. Three days later, Freiwald filed suit on behalf of the third neighbor, Franklin D. Branham, who had died shortly after his diagnosis with brain cancer, in June 2004.

Mr. Freund, 44, a longtime resident of McCullom Lake Village, located in McHenry County, Illinois, was diagnosed in December 2004 with an extremely rare brain cancer, oligodendroglioma. One month later, his next-door neighbor, Kurt Weisenberger, 64, was diagnosed with the very same cancer. Six months earlier, in June 2004, Mr. Branham, 63, a longtime resident of the same residential community and another neighbor of Mr. Freund’s, died of malignant brain cancer.

Freiwald’s investigation turned up thousands of pages of documents going back more than 20 years, that had not been disclosed to the public and that showed decades of toxic chemical contamination of air and groundwater by three manufacturing companies located about one mile north of McCullom Lake Village. The companies, Rohm and Haas, Morton International (a wholly owned subsidiary of Rohm and Haas) and Modine Manufacturing Company are legally responsible for their brain cancers, the suits allege, because of years of toxic chemical spills that led to contamination with known cancer-causing compounds, including vinyl chloride and trichloroethene.

Rohm and Haas is one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies and has its corporate headquarters in Philadelphia. Modine Manufacturing Company, based in Racine, Wisconsin, is a manufacturer of heating and cooling equipment. Huntsman, a $13 billion a year international chemicals company is based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

On April 25, 2006, Freiwald also filed a class action on behalf of all current and former residents of the roughly 500-home residential community. The class action seeks funds to establish a medical monitoring program to determine whether anyone else exposed to toxic chemicals over the years that the defendant companies polluted the air and groundwater may also have cancer. The class action also seeks funds to safeguard residents and their water supply, to compensate residents for lost property values, water purification costs and other expenses.

In the weeks following the filing of these cases, more and more individuals with stories of cancer and other brain tumors approached Freiwald. In late May 2006, Freiwald filed three additional individual lawsuits. One is filed on behalf of Judith Weisheit, 64, a longtime McCullom Lake Village resident, who was diagnosed in April 2006 with glioblastoma multiforme, the same cancer that afflicted Mr. Branham.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Weisheit died in February 2007.  A second action was filed on behalf of Sandy Wierschke, 44, a longtime and current resident of the Village, who was diagnosed in that same month with glioblastoma. A third action was filed on behalf of Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Milliman, 44, a member of the McHenry County Sheriff’s Department, who in 2002 was diagnosed with oligodendroglioma, the same super-rare brain cancer that had struck Mr. Freund and Mr. Weisenberger. Although Deputy Milliman did not reside in McCullom Lake Village, he spent considerable time in and around the Village while was on patrol.

All together the firm has filed cases on behalf of 18 individuals with brain cancer or brain tumors. F our McCullom Lake Village residents have been diagnosed with glioblastomas since the litigation began. In addition, the firm is evaluating claims on behalf of three other current or former area residents.

Morton, famous for its salt and also for its chemicals business, operated the specialty chemicals plant in Ringwood, Illinois for decades before Rohm and Haas purchased Morton for nearly $5 billion in 1999.  Adjacent to the Rohm and Haas facility and due south is Modine, which manufactured radiators at their Ringwood facility for years.

Starting in the 1960s, according to newly uncovered documents, Morton dumped massive quantities of toxic chemical waste into an 8-acre open lagoon on its property. The lagoon was eventually buried in the late 1970s, around the same time that a rail car spilled huge amounts of 1, 1 dichloroethene on the property, another toxic chemical that is integral to the company’s chemical plastics business. In 1985, Morton tested the groundwater underneath its facility and identified significant groundwater contamination with toxic chemicals, some of which, including vinyl chloride, are associated with cancer in humans. It was not until 1991, that Morton undertook a groundwater remediation program to address the widespread toxic contamination. In the 1990s, Modine identified toxic contamination on its property, which is adjacent to the Morton facility, in part from a former chemical waste pit on its property that was leaching noxious, cancer-causing pollutants.

Meanwhile, no efforts were made to notify residents of McCullom Lake Village, whose homes lay in the direct pathway of the toxic chemicals that were migrating underground from the Morton/Rohm and Haas, Modine and Huntsman facilities. Indeed, plaintiffs in both lawsuits filed today, claim that defendants knowingly concealed evidence and information about the extensive toxic contamination on their sites.

The 18 individuals who have now brought claims for their malignant brain cancers allege that Rohm and Haas, Morton and the other defendants are legally responsible for, among other things, failing to prevent the toxic spills, for failing to implement an appropriate and adequate groundwater remediation program and for failing to warn residents of the only major residential community in the direct path of the underground contamination, McCullom Lake Village. All 18 individuals are seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

In the class action, which was filed in federal court in Philadelphia, the claims are that Rohm and Haas and the other defendants are liable under federal hazardous waste site laws for clean up expenses and other damages the residents of McCullom Lake Village have incurred or will incur in the future. The class action also seeks funds for medical monitoring so that past and former residents of the community can obtain appropriate testing, such as MRIs or CT scans of the brain, to determine whether anyone else may have brain cancer or other serious illnesses attributable to the years of toxic exposure.

Mr. Freiwald, a former resident of suburban Chicago, is a graduate of Columbia College in New York and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.  Layser & Freiwald, P.C. is a 7-attorney firm with offices in Philadelphia and Westmont, New Jersey.  The firm concentrates in trial work in cases involving toxic torts, healthcare liability and catastrophic personal injury.  Glenn Ellis and Patricia M. Giordano, both associates with Layser & Freiwald, are assisting Mr. Freiwald in the Ringwood litigation, as is a team of biochemists, toxicologists, hydrogeologists and physician consultants. 

In related litigation, Mr. Freiwald represents two former research chemists who worked for Rohm and Haas in the company’s Spring House, Pennsylvania research facility.  Both individuals developed malignant brain cancer, along with at least 10 other former employees of the chemical research complex.  Those cases are pending.

Copies of the Ringwood lawsuits are posted to the firm’s website.  In addition, there are links to the numerous new articles that have been published about the cases, documents of interest involving the case, and other papers filed in connection with these cases.

To view documents and get more information on this ongoing litigation, please click here.