Suit alleges Amoco responsible for cancer at Naperville facility

Ten years after lawsuits began pouring in against oil-giant BP Amoco regarding more than 20 employees of its Naperville research center developing a variety of deadly cancers, lawyers for the families of the victims think they are getting closer to a trial.

Cynthia Koning is one of many who filed suit against BP Amoco over the years, after the death of her husband Paul Koning in 2006.

According to a lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, Paul Koning worked at the Amoco Research Center in Naperville from 1987 to 1996. In 2006, he was diagnosed with brain cancer and died the same year.

Employees of the center performed a number of scientific experiments using chemicals that are "known neurotoxins or carcinogens," the suit alleged. Building 500, which has three wings connected to the research center, "consistently had problems in the air quality which caused employees to complain as early as the 1970s," the suit said.

Paul Koning's form of brain cancer was the most widespread type among employees in Building 500, according to Koning's lawyer, Kenneth Lumb. Lumb's firm, Corboy and Demetrio, has been representing cases regarding Building 500 employees like Koning for 10 years.

The firm currently has between eight and 10 people filing suit against the oil company and research center, and has represented many more over the years.

"It became abundantly clear that there was an excess of tumors found in employees at the facility in the mid-90s," Lumb said.

The company was allegedly aware of the problem with ventilation and toxins in the 1970s, but failed to alert employees until the lawsuits began coming in 1998.

The company then hired researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Johns Hopkins University, who conducted what Lumb calls a "shallow and limited study" which only slightly acknowledged "part of the problem."

That study found that the amount of gliomas, or brain cancer, recorded among white men who worked in the complex's Building 503 was 15 times that of the general population, but did not address any other forms of cancer. BP Amoco has maintained that, aside from brain cancer, there was not significant rise in other cancers.

"We heartily disagree with that," Lumb said. Former Building 500 employees have died of cancers in the liver, colon and bladder along with a variety of brain cancers over the years.

At least seven former employees of the research center have died from a variety of cancers allegedly caused by toxins they were exposed to while working at the facility.

The third floor of a wing in Building 500 was closed down in 1996, about 20 years after original complaints were made, the suit said. The highest number of employees with cancerous tumors worked on that floor, Lumb said.

Lumb says his firm has been sorting through more than 600,000 pages of documents, many of which took 10 years to obtain from the oil giant. After years of what he calls a "procedural battle," Lumb thinks cases will start being tried as soon as next year.

BP Amoco settled suits with several families whose loved ones died of cancer in 2000, but settlements have slowed, Lumb said.

The Koning suit lists BP Corp. of North America, Amoco Oil Company, Amoco Research Operating Co., Research Properties Inc., Amoco Service Co., Amoco Oil Research Co. and Amoco Research Co. as being negligent, liable for what took place on their premises and responsible for the wrongful death of Paul Koning.

"We believe the facility at the time was dangerous," Lumb said. "We are just about there."