Shares of Sotera Health Company (Nasdaq: SHC), surged premarket after the company announced it will pay $408 million to settle more than 870 million legal cases in Illinois. Sotera’s stock has fll with 60.1% over the past year.
CLEVELAND, Jan. 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Sotera Health Company (Nasdaq: SHC), a leading global provider of mission-critical end-to-end sterilization solutions and lab testing and advisory services for the healthcare industry, today announced that its subsidiaries have reached agreements to settle the more than 870 ethylene oxide (“EO”) cases pending against Sterigenics in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, and US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Under the terms of the agreements, Sterigenics will pay $408 million to settle the claims, subject to substantially all of the plaintiffs providing opt-in consents to their individual settlement allocations and dismissing their claims with prejudice. The administration and completion of the settlement agreements is expected to require up to 90 – 120 days. Sterigenics and Sotera Health LLC deny any liability and the agreements explicitly provide that the settlements are not to be construed as an admission of any liability or that emissions from the Willowbrook facilities ever posed any safety hazard to the surrounding communities.
Sotera Health Company issued the following statement:
"The agreements provide a pathway to comprehensively resolve the claims pending against Sterigenics and Sotera Health LLC in Illinois and thereby enable the Company to focus its full attention on operating the business, serving our customers and delivering on our mission of Safeguarding Global Health®. Sterigenics maintains that its Willowbrook operations did not pose a safety risk to the community in which it operated and believes the evidence and science ultimately would have compelled the rejection of the plaintiffs’ claims, as occurred in the Teresa Fornek trial. However, years of biased media coverage in the greater Chicago area, the significant costs of posting a large bond in support of the appeal of the Kamuda verdict and the time and expense that would have been required to continue to contest hundreds of additional lawsuits through a multi-year process in the Illinois court system led us to conclude that resolving the pending Willowbrook EO cases would be in the best interest of the Company and its stakeholders. As we have done consistently throughout our history, we will continue to operate 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."
