Toxic Torts

The attorneys at Layser & Freiwald have experience handling cases involving health effects from environmental waste and exposures to toxic chemicals and other substances.

• The firm represents more than a 30 individuals, all residents or former residents in a lakeside residential community in Northern Illinois, who have contracted brain cancer due to toxic chemical releases at nearby chemical and industrial manufacturing facilities. The individual cancer cases seek compensatory and punitive damages against Rohm and Haas Chemical Company. The firm already reached a settlement with co-defendant Modine Manufacturing Company. The claims involved decades of dumping chemical toxins into the soil, air and groundwater just uphill and upstream from the plaintiffs’ homes. The firm also has handled a Class Action, seeking medical monitoring and damages for property loss and other expenses, on behalf of all the other residents of the community, McCullom Lake Village, because of the decades of exposure and the dramatically increased incidence of brain cancer. Thanks to a medical screening program, funded by the settlement with Modine, members of the community were able to obtain MRIs or other diagnostic testing for brain tumors. Two individuals had brain tumors diagnosed because of this program.
• Mr. Freiwald has also represented workers at a chemical research facility outside of Philadelphia where more than a dozen workers were diagnosed with malignant brain cancers.
• Mr. Freiwald has also represented clients with health or property damage claims relating to exposure to

– Vinyl chloride

– Lead

– Benzene

– TCE

-- Radiation or radioactive materials and emissions