Sotera Health finalizes settlement of ethylene oxide litigation in Illinois

Sotera Health announced that the opt-in process for the January 2023 settlements of ethylene oxide claims against Sterigenics in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois is complete and Sterigenics has elected to proceed with the settlements.879 of the 882 claimants eligible to participate in the settlement program have opted in. The settling claimants and Sterigenics will now request that the Circuit Court enter an order confirming that these are good-faith settlements under the Illinois Contribution Among Joint Tortfeasors Act. The settlement funds will be released from escrow for disbursement to the settling claimants ten days after the Court enters the anticipated good-faith determination and their claims against Sterigenics will subsequently be dismissed with prejudice. The lawsuits of the three claimants who opted out of the settlement will proceed to pretrial discovery pursuant to a schedule to be set by the Circuit Court. The Company issued the following statement regarding the settlement agreement: “We are pleased that 99.7 percent of the eligible claimants are participating in the settlements. The agreements explicitly state that the settlements are not to be construed as an admission of liability, and Sterigenics maintains that its Willowbrook operations did not pose a safety risk to the surrounding community. As we have done throughout our history, we will continue to operate all our facilities in compliance with applicable rules and regulations and best industry practices to ensure the safety of our employees, the communities in which we operate and patients around the world.” The Company will not incur any additional charges in association with the completion of the settlement beyond those previously incurred in the fourth quarter of 2022.