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August 18, 2006

More popcorn workers sue flavoring makers

By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

Twenty-nine more workers and former workers at the Jasper Popcorn Co. plant filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming injuries from a butter flavoring used at the plant.

The lawsuit, filed in Jasper County Circuit Court, names three additional companies as co-defendants, along with the makers of one of the butter flavorings used at the plant, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., and the company with which IFF merged in 2001, Bush Boake Allen Inc. They were the lone defendants named in previous lawsuits filed by 43 other workers at the plant.

"This has been a long road for the Jasper popcorn workers," said Kenneth McClain, a lawyer from Independence who has handled all the Jasper popcorn workers' cases. "NIOSH identified 117 workers with abnormal lung conditions in 2002. It is natural that more cases have surfaced."

The newly named co-defendants are Givaudan Flavors Inc., Aldrich Chemical Co. and Sigma-Aldrich Corp.

The suit alleges that Givaudan supplied the plant with a second butter flavoring containing diacetyl, exposure to which allegedly caused a rare lung disease in the workers known as bronchiolitis obliterans. Aldrich Chemical and its parent company, Sigma-Aldrich, supplied International Flavors and Bush Boake Allen with acetaldehyde, another flavoring ingredient believed to have made the exposure to diacetyl even more deadly, according to the lawsuit.

Thirty workers filed a lawsuit in 2001 in Jasper County after an investigation by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A handful of cases went to trial, with juries awarding two verdicts of $15 million, one for $20 million and one for $2.7 million. Those verdicts were appealed, and the last three workers with verdicts still on appeal settled with the companies last week for undisclosed amounts.

The remainder of those cases were settled out of court or before verdicts were reached, along with 13 other workers' cases that were in federal court.

McClain said the addition of three defendants to the latest suit stems from new information that surfaced about those companies' alleged responsibility for injuries at the plant. He said cases of bronchiolitis obliterans developed at Givaudan's own plant in Ohio before the company sold the product to the Jasper plant.

McClain represents plaintiffs in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and other states, as well as Missouri, in butter-flavoring cases.

He said it also is now alleged that Aldrich Chemical and Sigma-Aldrich contributed to "the chemical soup" of butter flavorings used at the Jasper plant by providing acetaldehyde to International Flavors and Bush Boake Allen.

McClain said NIOSH previously had not figured out why laboratory tests found the makers' butter flavoring more hazardous than diacetyl alone. He said the agency now believes that other ingredients in the flavoring exacerbated the effects of diacetyl.

"We know that acetaldehyde will cause disease on its own," McClain said. "That was demonstrated in the Givaudan plant."

Givaudan did not respond to an effort to contact the company for comment Thursday. A spokesman for Aldrich Chemical and Sigma-Aldrich said those companies' policy is not to comment on pending litigation.

New plaintiffs

Mary Arles, Golden City

Marilyn Benefield, Jasper

Glenn Borland, Carthage

Jason Byrd, Carthage

Bruce Clements, Lamar

Bill Craig, Jasper

Darrell Crockett, Lamar

Rusty Davis, Carthage

Vonnie Davis, Carthage

Jeannie Ellis, Jasper

Rhonda Garner, Jasper

Joyce Hamilton, Jasper

Susan Hayes, Jasper

Pauline Horn, Carthage

Lorri Ingalls, Iantha

Georgia Leaming, Jasper

James Leedy, Jasper

Roger Luce, Jerico Springs

Michael Marks, Jasper

Rita Mitchell, Carthage

Dorothy Morrison, Tulsa, Okla.

Tammy Parker, Jasper

Donald Pettyjohn, Jasper

James Pittman, Carthage

Carla Rutledge, Jasper

Maria A. Saldivar, Carthage

Lola Schooler, Jasper

Danny Spry, Carthage

Deena Stebler, Jasper

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