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Lawrenceville, GA— Attorneys Tuesday debated what caused a Georgia man’s blood cancer, as a first-of-its-kind trial in the state opened against a medical device company over claims a sterilization chemical that it uses led to the disease. Walker v. Becton Dickinson, et al., 21-C-08201.
Gary Walker, 75, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, in 2017. Walker claims that years of exposure to ethylene oxide at and around a Bard medical equipment complex in Covington, Georgia caused his cancer, which is now in remission.
Bard is now a subsidiary of defendant Becton Dickinson, a global medical technology company.
The case is the first of its kind to go to trial in Georgia State Court and among hundreds of similar claims in the state against companies that use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical devices. Walker, who worked as a short-haul truck driver in the Covington area for years, claims he was exposed to the chemical during stops at the facility, and while living in the surrounding area.
During Tuesday’s openings, Walker’s attorney, Rueb Stoller Daniel’s Stephen “Buck” Daniel, told jurors that multiple organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency and National Cancer Institute, warn of links between ethylene oxide, or EtO, and cancer. Daniel said the chemical off-gassed from Bard’s shipment boxes and leaked from the factory itself, exposing anyone at the facility, as well as the surrounding community at-large, to dangerous levels of the toxin.
Daniel added that Bard knew the dangers of the chemical but failed to warn the public.
“The evidence in this case will reveal that a company poisoned a Georgia community for over 50 years, without warning them.” Daniel said. “You’re going to learn that this company was hiding those dangers in plain sight.”
But the defense contends that those in the area surrounding its complex were never exposed to dangerous levels of the gas, and it claims there is no evidence linking Walker’s disease to the chemical.
In his opening, Troutman Pepper Locke’s Eric Rumanek told jurors that evidence would show Walker’s cancer bore the hallmarks of a naturally occurring, unpreventable form of the disease. And he said neither Walker’s treating physicians nor his medical records linked his cancer to EtO exposure.
Rumanek told jurors that evidence would show the levels of EtO coming out of the Bard factory were safe, and added that the chemical could often be found in the environment.
“Ethylene oxide is everywhere. In this courtroom, each one of us, the evidence will show, ... is breathing in ethylene oxide," Rumanek said. "And we’re breathing it in at levels [in which] we don’t need to be scared about it.”
This trial comes roughly a year-and-a-half after a $30 million settlement that medical device manufacturer Sterigenics reached with dozens of plaintiffs who claimed EtO exposure surrounding the company’s Smyrna, Georgia facility caused their cancer. Sterigenics reached that agreement days before trial was scheduled to open in a case involving one of those plaintiffs.
Walker’s trial against Bard and Becton Dickinson, in Gwinnett County State Court, is scheduled to last roughly four weeks. CVN is covering the trial gavel-to-gavel and will provide updates on its news page.
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
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