King & Spalding announced that on March 14, after a six-week trial and nearly five years of litigation, the firm won a complete defense verdict on behalf of Terumo BCT, Inc. and Terumo BCT Sterilization Services, Inc. in a case pending in Jefferson County District Court.
Terumo designs and manufactures medical devices, including technology used in cell-based therapy. Many of the devices are manufactured and sterilized at the Lakewood campus, according to King & Spalding.
In this trial, four plaintiffs alleged that since the 1960s, Terumo negligently emitted ethylene oxide gas from its Lakewood, Colorado, facility and caused them to develop cancer. The four plaintiffs were represented by Edelson and Zaner Law.
The plaintiffs asked the jury to award $444 million, including compensatory and punitive damages. After a little more than a day of deliberations, the jury returned a complete defense verdict.
The King & Spalding trial team was led by John Ewald, Doug Henderson, Nic Howell, Angela Tarasi, Andrew Whittaker and Joe Eisert. The team included Randy Butterfield, Sarah Warburg-Koechlin, Robert Sheppard, Caroline Jozefczyk, Cristina Azcoitia, Dominic Conoshenti, Tyler Easley and Marissa Grabowski.