A federal judge in Chicago gave formal approval Tuesday to a $16.9 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit claiming spills at a Lockformer Co. metal fabricating equipment plant contaminated about 1,400 homes near Lisle and Woodridge.
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber authorized an agreement that was reached in September 2003 between the homeowners and the parent of Lockformer, Met-Coil Systems Corp., and its parent company, Mestek Inc. That informal $12.5 million agreement was on hold while Met-Coil completed bankruptcy proceedings, which ended last month.
As part of that agreement, the two defendants committed to funding homeowners’ hookups to clean water, but the cost of that effort had not been determined. Tuesday’s formal authorization sets that figure at $2 million.
Another element of the agreement formalized Tuesday calls for a third defendant in the case, Honeywell International Inc., which had supplied the degreaser that contaminated the area, to settle class-action claims against it for $2.4 million.
The agreement calls for about 200 of the most severely effected homeowners to receive on average $30,000 for the loss of property value and compensation for using bottled water since August 2001, when the lawsuit was filed, said Shawn Collins, one of the homeowners’ attorneys.
In addition, Collins said, Met-Coil, Mestek and Honeywell will fund each homeowner’s connection to clean water, an effort that averages about $12,000 per home for the most severely effected.
“These folks have been through hell,” said Collins, adding that homeowners can expect to begin receiving checks in October. “They need to move on with their lives, and that means getting them connected to clean water. That’s got to happen right away.”
Efforts to reach attorneys for Met-Coil, Mestek and Honeywell were unsuccessful Tuesday.
The homeowners’ complaint contended that spills at the Lockformer plant from the late 1960s to the early 1990s tainted their drinking water with a toxic degreaser solvent containing trichloroethylene.
In approving the settlement, Leinenweber also authorized an additional $7.2 million payment from the three defendants to a woman diagnosed with cancer. The disease is in remission, Collins said.
The judge’s approval ends all the neighbors’ litigation against the companies for the contamination. But Collins noted that “a 20-year latency” exists between exposure to the chemical and illness. TCE has been linked to many health problems, including cancer.
“One of the troubling realities is that they may not know for several years whether they have been made ill by this exposure,” Collins said.
