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Eric J. Hertz, P.C.

Ethylene Oxide Litigation

The lawyers putting an invisible gas on trial.

Eric J. Hertz, P.C. is lead counsel in multiple national litigations that hold companies accountable for emitting ethylene oxide. The firm is built on legal scholarship, trial experience, disciplined proof development, and principled accountability. That combination guides the way we investigate cases, develop evidence, value harm, and present claims in court. We handle cases involving corporate misconduct, toxic exposure, and punitive damages, and other matters where families, communities, and the public trust are at stake. We are repeatedly on the other side of well-funded defendants in high-stakes litigation, and we have the resources to prepare each case to be understood, tested, and proven. We study the law. We build the record. We develop the evidence, and we connect the harm to the conduct.

Ethylene oxide is a colorless, odorless gas that is a recognized human carcinogen. The areas of the country in which we are currently handling cases are:

Covington, GA Smyrna, GA Willowbrook, IL Waukegan, IL Erie, PA Baltimore, MD Richmond, VA Memphis, TN Temple Terrace, FL Fort Myers, FL Los Angeles, CA

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Eric J. HertzLead Counsel · Ethylene Oxide Litigation

The Case File

Open a chapter to watch a story unfold.

The GasWhat ethylene oxide is, and why nobody living beside it ever saw it.→ The MapEvery community on live satellite terrain, and a 3D globe of the docket.→

0+Jury trials as lead counsel

0Author of three Thomson Reuters treatisesLaw of Damages · Punitive Damages · Law of Torts

1968U.S. Supreme Court Bar

0xBoard certified: National Board of Trial Advocacy and American Board of Trial Advocates

What Is Ethylene Oxide

A carcinogen that was never meant to be noticed.

For years it was treated as an industrial footnote, a gas that sterilizes. Today it is understood as one of the most potent airborne carcinogens regulated in the United States, and the neighborhoods beside the plants that use it are the ones paying for the delay.

Ethylene oxide sterilizes roughly half of all medical devices in the country, from surgical kits to catheters. Its job is to kill everything. It does that job well. The same reactivity that makes it an effective sterilant is what makes it dangerous to breathe.

It has no color and no odor. A family living near a facility cannot see it or smell it, which means they cannot guard against it, even as it seeps into their homes and the yards where their children play. The harm is cumulative and the latency can be long. The diagnosis often arrives years after the exposure that caused it.

That is what makes these cases so complex, and so necessary. There is nothing in the air to point to, but the proof lives in emissions data, in modeling, in medical records, and in the conduct of the companies that knew. Building that proof, taking it to a jury, and fighting against well-funded defendants is our job.

~50%

Of all U.S. medical devices are sterilized using ethylene oxide

2016

The federal reassessment that sharply raised the estimated inhalation cancer risk

0 warning

No color, no odor, and no chance to keep it out.

You didn't see it. You didn't even know to look for it. Our job is to make sure the jury does.

Covington, GeorgiaSmyrna, GeorgiaErie, PennsylvaniaMemphis, TennesseeTemple Terrace, FloridaFort Myers, FloridaBaltimore, MarylandRichmond, VirginiaLos Angeles, CaliforniaWillowbrook, IllinoisWaukegan, IllinoisCovington, GeorgiaSmyrna, GeorgiaErie, PennsylvaniaMemphis, TennesseeTemple Terrace, FloridaFort Myers, FloridaBaltimore, MarylandRichmond, VirginiaLos Angeles, CaliforniaWillowbrook, IllinoisWaukegan, Illinois

Eric J. Hertz, P.C.The National Docket

Willowbrook, IllinoisWaukegan, IllinoisLos Angeles, CaliforniaBaltimore, MarylandRichmond, VirginiaFort Myers, FloridaTemple Terrace, FloridaMemphis, TennesseeErie, PennsylvaniaSmyrna, GeorgiaCovington, GeorgiaWillowbrook, IllinoisWaukegan, IllinoisLos Angeles, CaliforniaBaltimore, MarylandRichmond, VirginiaFort Myers, FloridaTemple Terrace, FloridaMemphis, TennesseeErie, PennsylvaniaSmyrna, GeorgiaCovington, Georgia

The Map of the Harm

Where the gas traveled,
and who it reached.

These are not points on a map. They are neighborhoods, with schools and homes inside the reach of the emissions. (Choose a location and scroll.)

Live globe and satellite terrain need an internet connection and WebGL. Every location is fully described in the panels.

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Live satellite terrain

United States

Coordinates38.0, -96.0

About the Firm

Where law, proof, and trial strategy converge.

Eric J. Hertz, P.C. is a litigation practice built on legal scholarship, trial experience, and principled accountability.

We study the law. We build the record. We develop the evidence, and we connect the harm to the conduct. That combination guides the way we investigate cases, value harm, and present claims in court.

Our work often carries significance beyond the individual lawsuit. We handle matters involving corporate misconduct, toxic exposure, civil rights, public safety failures, and punitive damages, where accountability affects families, communities, and public trust. We are repeatedly on the other side of well funded defendants in high stakes litigation, and we prepare each case to be understood, tested, and proven.

Toxic exposureCorporate misconductCivil rightsPublic safetyPunitive damages

100+Jury trials as lead counsel

3Legal treatises authored for Thomson Reuters

2018Admitted to the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court

2xBoard certified trial attorney, NBTA and ABOTA

The record behind the firmScholarship, certification, and trial experience

Command of the subject

Built on published authority and command of the science.

Eric J. Hertz has not only tried these cases. He has written on the law that governs them.

He is the author of the Thomson Reuters treatises on the Georgia law of damages and on punitive damages in Georgia, with companion forms for the law of torts. These are working references for the bar, and the same command of damages they reflect is brought to bear in every matter the firm takes to trial.

Ethylene oxide cases are not won on sympathy. They are won on the record: air dispersion modeling that places the plume over specific homes, dose reconstruction, and the medical causation that ties an exposure to a diagnosis, all of it tested under Daubert. The firm builds each case from that evidence forward.

The science is settled enough to be dangerous to defendants. In December 2016 the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its evaluation classifying ethylene oxide as carcinogenic to humans by inhalation, citing strong evidence of lymphoid and breast cancers among exposed workers and sharply revising the assessed inhalation risk. That finding reframed what families living beside sterilization plants had been breathing for years.

These matters move through the machinery of coordinated mass tort and multidistrict litigation, where a small set of bellwether trials test the proof and set the terms on which the larger group of claims is resolved. That is the terrain the firm works in, and prepares for accordingly.

Damages and punitive damages, authoredExposure science and causationDaubert and admissibilityMass tort and MDL practice

The Record

Why this is the lawyer the companies meet in court.

Not a marketing claim. A record opposing counsel can look up and a judge can verify, built over three decades and carried to the highest court in the country.

Leadership and standing

Regional Vice President, Georgia Trial Lawyers AssociationChair of the Gwinnett trial lawyers and a member of the American Association for Justice Leaders Forum.
Judicial Qualifications Commission, 2018Appointed to the State Bar of Georgia committee that vets the state's judges.
Melvin Belli Society and National Trial LawyersMembership among invitation only organizations of the country's leading trial attorneys.

Recognition and teaching

America's Top 100 High Stakes LitigatorsAlongside selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 and to Atlanta Super Lawyers.
Continuing legal education facultyHe teaches the trial bar on punitive damages and trial practice, and guest lectures at the University of Georgia School of Law.
Top nursing home trial lawyerRecognized among the country's leading nursing home litigators, and the author of a book for affected families.

The Testimony

Civil litigation is one of society's essential tools for testing power, exposing misconduct, and requiring accountability. Our role is to bring structure, clarity, and proof to that process.

Eric J. Hertz, P.C.The standard we work to

A litigation practice built on legal scholarship, trial experience, and principled accountability.

The Closing

If the air made your family sick, start the conversation.

Consultations for ethylene oxide and exposure matters are confidential and without obligation. Tell the firm what happened, and it will tell you whether you have a case.

404-577-8111

8300 Dunwoody Place, Suite 300
Atlanta, Georgia 30350

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