Sotera Health (NASDAQ:SHC) shares soared Tuesday after the company announced its subsidiaries came to agreements to settle more than 870 cases relating to the exposure of ethylene oxide, a carcinogen, from its Willowbrook facilities. Sotera agreed to pay $408 million and said the settlement is not an admission that the emissions posed a safety hazard.
The provider of sterilization, lab testing and advisory services said it struck agreements to settle hundreds of legal actions against the company's units alleging illnesses caused by exposure to a chemical known as ethylene oxide.
The Broadview Heights, Ohio, company said it will pay $408 million to settle the more-than-870 cases pending in Illinois, subject to substantially all of the plaintiffs providing opt-in consents to their individual settlement allocations and dismissing their claims with prejudice.
The suits allege personal injuries including cancer and other diseases, or wrongful death, resulting from purported emissions and releases of ethylene oxide from a former plant of Sotera's Sterigenics unit in Willowbrook, Ill.
An Illinois jury in September awarded more than $360 million to a plaintiff who claimed exposure to ethylene oxide gas from the plant gave her cancer. Sotera has asked the judge in that case to set the verdict aside or grant a new trial.
A separate jury in November found that Sterigenics wasn't liable for cancer in a woman who lived near the Willowbrook plant for decades.
SHC shares galloped $6.59, or 76.3%, to $15.23.
