backOn March 14, 2025, after a six-week trial and nearly five years of litigation, King & Spalding won a complete defense verdict on behalf of its clients Terumo BCT, Inc. and Terumo BCT Sterilization Services, Inc. in a case pending in Jefferson County District Court, Colorado. This is the fifth ethylene oxide case to go to trial since hundreds of such cases began to be filed across the country in 2018, and is the first multi-plaintiff ethylene oxide case tried in the country to date.
In this bellwether trial, four plaintiffs alleged that Terumo had negligently emitted ethylene oxide gas from its Lakewood, Colorado facility since the 1960s and caused them to develop cancer. These four plaintiffs are among hundreds recruited by plaintiffs’ firms Edelson and Zaner Law in the area surrounding the facility. Plaintiffs’ counsel Kurt Zaner asked the jury to award $444 million, including compensatory and punitive damages. After a little over a day of deliberations, the jury returned a complete defense verdict.
Terumo designs and manufactures life-saving medical devices, including technology used as part of stem cell therapy. Many of these devices are manufactured and sterilized at their Lakewood, CO, campus.
The King & Spalding trial team was led by John Ewald, Doug Henderson, Nic Howell, Angela Tarasi, Andrew Whittaker, and Joe Eisert and also included Randy Butterfield, Sarah Warburg-Koechlin, Robert Sheppard, Caroline Jozefczyk, Cristina Azcoitia, Dominic Conoshenti, Tyler Easley, Marissa Grabowski, Jeff Shahlaie, and Ercy Castro. Luke McFarland of McFarland Litigation Partners served as local counsel.