PHILADELPHIA – Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard attorneys Patrick A. Salvi II, Lance D. Northcutt and Jennifer M. Cascio were recently honored as finalists for Public Justice’s 2023 “Trial Lawyer of the Year” award. The team was one of only three legal teams throughout the country honored for their work in obtaining a $363 million jury verdict in the first trial against medical device sterilization company Sterigenics.
Plaintiff Sue Kamuda was an active, healthy woman when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. She did not have any known risk factors or family history of breast cancer, but she did live near a Sterigenics plant in Willowbrook, Illinois.
The plant’s main purpose was sterilizing medical equipment. This process released known carcinogen ethylene oxide into the surrounding environment for decades, and Ms. Kamuda was the first of nearly 800 plaintiffs who also lived near the plant.
Ms. Kamuda filed her case in September 2018 in the Cook County Circuit Court, and it went to trial on August 18, 2022. During the five-week trial, the legal team presented evidence that Sterigenics knew about the risks of emitting ethylene oxide into the environment yet continued to emit excessive and unnecessary amounts of the colorless, odorless carcinogen for decades without warning the community or using safer methods that were available. Thus, residents of Willowbrook had inadvertently inhaled the gas on a daily basis for decades. Ms. Kamuda and her husband had moved into their Willowbrook home in 1985, around the same time Sterigenics began setting up its facility in the very same community. Further, Ms. Kamuda was able to prove that Sterigenics and its parent companies invested to increase capacity at the Willowbrook facility, but did not bother investing in additional safety measures.
On September 19, 2022, a jury awarded $363 million to Ms. Kamuda, including $38 million in compensatory and $325 million in punitive damages. It was the largest jury verdict awarded to a single plaintiff in Illinois history. The trial also marks the first step in setting a precedent that Sterigenics cannot distort science with money and that companies like Sterigenics will be held accountable for putting profits above public safety.
The Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard team was assisted at trial by Shawn Collins of the Collins Law Firm, Scott Entin and Deanna Pihos of Miner Barnhill Galland.
Each year, Public Justice presents its Trial Lawyer of the Year Award to the attorney(s) who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a precedent-setting, socially significant case. This year’s three finalists were honored at the Public Justice Gala, which took place on Monday, July 16 at the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia.
For more information, please contact Marcie Mangan at (312) 372-1227 or mmangan@salvilaw.com.
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