In separate lawsuits filed in Berkshire County’s Superior Court this week, three residents allege that “extensive exposure” to the now-banned polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) emanating from Pittsfield’s Allendale Elementary School (Allendale) caused cancer to themselves or family members. The documents, about 100 pages each, name General Electric Company and Monsanto Company as defendants, along with subsequent iterations and owners of such businesses.
In the filings, attorneys—independent sole practitioners Thomas Bosworth and John Stewart—alleged the GE facility “Hill 78” served as a hazardous waste storage site for PCBs manufactured by Monsanto and used by GE in its products. PCBs have since been declared as toxins that are harmful to human and environmental health. According to the complaints, Hill 78 was 40 feet uphill from Allendale, and PCB-laden soil from its site was used as playground landfill when the school was created. The filings reflect various studies that allege unacceptable PCB levels have remained and continue to remain in the area’s soil and air.
The pleadings cite a 2006 letter from local physicians to then-Pittsfield Mayor James M. Ruberto stating that, due to its close proximity to Hill 78, Allendale children are “at (a) potential health risk” and their right “to attend an environmentally safe school” cannot be assured. Further, the allegations include a statement that currently the school lacks a bottom liner to protect against PCBs seeping out of the soil during rainstorms.
The allegations
In her August 15 lawsuit, Pittsfield mother Crystal Czerno alleges her nine-year-old son contracted leukemia about two years ago as a direct result of exposure to PCBs at his school, Allendale, as well as at their home a couple of blocks away.
Lenox business owner Kristie Harford’s August 18 complaint states that her aggressive breast cancer as an adult was caused directly by PCBs surrounding Allendale, the school she attended from kindergarten through fifth grade (1978–1984). As with Czerno’s son, Harford lived several hundred feet from the GE plant while growing up, the complaint explains.
Also filed August 18, Jessica Sullivan’s lawsuit on behalf of her 11-year-old son states that he is suffering from brain cancer “due to continuous exposure to PCBs both at home and at his school (Allendale).” Bosworth said the Pittsfield family lived in an apartment on Tyler Street “that literally overlooked the old GE plant.”
As is stated in these lawsuits, none of the individuals affected have a family history of cancer.
In the Czerno lawsuit, Bosworth points to a 2019 medical study of 400 children that he said correlates PCB exposure—including dust particles—with an increased risk of acute leukemia of the type experienced by Czerno’s son. He said that dust samples taken at Allendale have revealed the existence of PCBs, with some of those levels having been above acceptable guidelines.
“We know from the emerging medical and scientific literature that while many of the older studies regarding PCB exposure focused on ingestion as the realm of exposure—they looked at people who were eating fish out of rivers back in the day that had PCBs—we know now that it’s inhalation as well,” Bosworth said.
Among a number of medical studies linking cancer to PCB exposure, Bosworth noted in the Harford complaint that “women who have breast cancer also have higher levels of PCBs in their system.” In the Sullivan complaint, he cited a 2004 article that associated the type of PCB prevalent at the Pittsfield GE plant with the type of brain cancer diagnosed in the Sullivan child.
When asked for comment by The Berkshire Edge, Monsanto representatives replied by email that the company released the following statement in response to complaints filed in the Superior Court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts bringing personal injury claims allegedly due to PCB exposure:
“While we have great sympathy for the plaintiffs in these cases, Monsanto is not responsible for the alleged injuries for many reasons including that it did not manufacture or dispose of PCBs near the Allendale Elementary School or in the greater Pittsfield area, and had no responsibility for or control over the electrical equipment plant in Pittsfield operated by another defendant in this case. Moreover, the weight of the scientific evidence does not support an association between exposure to PCBs and the cancers alleged in these cases, even among highly exposed former PCB workers. Monsanto will respond to this complaint in due course and maintains that its past electrical customers are obligated to defend and indemnify Monsanto based on the indemnity contract the companies agreed to in 1972.”
Allendale homes for sale: What’s the duty to disclose proximity to Hill 78?
For Czerno, discovering the Hill 78 facility’s history and its correlation to Allendale Elementary School was a surprise. She moved from Brainard, N.Y. to the Pittsfield neighborhood in 2017, unaware of Allendale being associated with PCBs,” Bosworth told The Edge.
As of August 17, according to Zillow, at least three homes were listed for sale in the close vicinity of Allendale Elementary School, with numerous other properties nearby sold in the past year.
According to Pittsfield attorney Thomas Hamel, partner in the firm Courtney, Lee and Hamel PC, the seller had an obligation in the property disclosure worksheet required of homes sold through the Multiple Listing Service to disclose personal knowledge of any impact of PCBs to that particular property, but not the area in general.
Not so of the selling home’s broker.
“The broker is licensed, and the broker has a greater duty to disclose known information than a particular seller who may not know they need to disclose because the particular seller is typically not in the business of buying or selling houses,” Hamel said. “Typically, the sale of your primary residence is something you do once or twice in your lifetime. The broker is selling them daily, monthly, annually, and the more experienced they are, the more they know about the community.”
He said the topic of PCBs in Pittsfield has been published in various newspapers and can be found at the Berkshire Athenaeum. “It’s your obligation to investigate what you want to know and where you want to know it, particularly where you’re going to live or raise your children,” Hamel said.
In 2021, the Berkshire County Board of Realtors posted a blurb on its website referencing a Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) statement of when a Realtor has a duty to disclose PCB information to a buyer. The one-pager stems from efforts to clean up the Housatonic River following decades of GE emitting PCBs into the waterway. It cites a February 10, 2020 settlement agreement, a permit produced between GE, the Environmental Protection Agency, and five Berkshire County towns—Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Sheffield, and Stockbridge—that proposed an upland disposal facility (UDF) be built in Lee to house a portion of the PCBs extracted from the Housatonic River. The document states a realtor may have a duty to disclose information about nearby PCB soil and water contamination; ongoing remediation work, especially if it abuts the property or is in neighborhoods in which the PCB-laden materials will be transported; limits on recreational use of certain waterways; or a home’s proximity to the dump site.
According to the statement, “There is no bright-line rule that limits an agent’s disclosure obligations.”
However, the MAR document provides that certain conditions require disclosure of problems that are off site, or not on the property itself, including groundwater contamination; an issue that’s known to the seller or broker but not easily observable; an issue that would affect how the buyer uses the property; or a condition that makes the property less valuable.
Finally, the document recommends that brokers and agents “err on the side of disclosure with the seller’s permission, when warranted.”
Far from over yet
Bosworth admits that, while many attorneys are hesitant to take a case like Czerno’s, correlating cancer with toxin exposure, “the facts on that case just stuck out to me like a sore thumb.”
A graduate of Temple University Beasley School of Law, the Pittsfield native who grew up in Lenox and practices in Philadelphia has experience representing plaintiffs in catastrophic personal injury, medical malpractice, and toxic exposure cases.
And there is more coming. The three complaints filed this week are just the tip of the iceberg as Bosworth said he’s been contacted by roughly 30 individuals from downstream communities—including Housatonic, Great Barrington, Lenox, and Lee—who have asserted a connection between their health issues or community concerns and local PCB exposure. Those lawsuits could be filed within the next month, he said.
“There are many more cases coming for many other people who have developed illnesses or cancers which can only be explained by exposure to the PCBs at GE in Pittsfield and that includes other children with cancer, that includes numerous other folks who have gone to Allendale,” Bosworth said.
As this article went to publication, GE has not responded to a request for comment.
