First McCullom Lake Brain Cancer Lawsuit Trials to Begin in June

The first of more than two dozen toxic tort lawsuits filed on behalf of individuals diagnosed with brain cancer after living in the area of McCullom Lake, Illinois are set to go to trial in early June.

The McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits have been filed against various defendants, including Rohm and Haas, which operated a chemical plant in the area. While many defendants have settled out of court, the first trial against Rohm & Haas and other non-settling defendants is scheduled to begin in Philadelphia in a little over one month.

About 30 people out of a community of only 1,000 people have been diagnosed with various forms of brain cancer in recent years. The cancer rate in the community is extremely high, considering the national average is only 7 brain cancer cases per 100,000 people.

The number of brain cancer lawsuits for McCullom Lake residents has grown steadily since the first cases were brought in 2006.

Several of the cases were diagnosed through a $1.4 million cancer cluster class action lawsuit settlement reached with nearby Modine Manufacturing, Inc. in 2008. The original settlement fund has been used to provide numerous vouchers for pre-paid medical testing to past and present residents of the area to screen for brain cancer and brain tumors. At least two of the cases were detected through MRI scans performed for residents using the settlement medical vouchers.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have said, despite the approaching trial, that there still could be more lawsuits filed as residents who have suffered injuries step forward.

The lawsuits contain allegations that Morton International and Rohm and Haas dumped chemicals illegally into local groundwater for decades, causing the unusually high cancer rate. Morton International owned the McCullom Lake chemical plant until 1999, when it was bought by Rohm and Haas. Rohm and Haas was purchased by Dow Chemical in April of last year.

Despite having admitted that chemicals were dumped in an eight-acre unlined pit for 20 years, Rohm and Haas has pledged to fight the lawsuits, saying their tests showed that contamination from the dumping flowed away from the village. In addition, the county tested 14 local wells and found no water contamination. However, plaintiffs contest the company’s claims about the flow of contaminants, and point out that the county tested the wells years after the company had ceased dumping, and never tested those wells while the groundwater was being contaminated.

Residents of another small town in Missouri have experienced a similar cluster of cancer, resulting in a number of brain tumor lawsuits for residents of Cameron, Missouri that allege the problems were caused by a tannery distributing toxic waste sludge to farmers for use as fertilizer on their fields. At least 70 Cameron, Missouri brain tumor cases have been diagnosed in that community of about 10,000 people.