10-27-2024 12:07am

Residents will be able to resubmit Chemtool claims that didn't go through

Michael McGinnis Editor

(L-R) Dan Flynn, Chemtool fire, Ed Manzke

Thousands of residents filed claims before the September 12, 2024 deadline to receive their portion of a $94.5 million settlement from the 2021 Chemtool explosion and fire.

Later the claims administrator told dozens of these residents that there was no record of their claims, each of which is worth thousands of dollars. Now hundreds more are wondering if their claims were lost too.

But attorney Dan Flynn of DiCello Levitt has good news. On October 19, he told us that the claims administrator, Analytics Consulting, has found records of the online claims that errored out. Doug Clayburg of South Beloit, one of the class members in the Chemtool lawsuit, had been pressing Flynn for a solution.

In the next week or two, Flynn said, the claims administrator "will be sending out deficiency notices to all class members who timely submitted a paper claim that did not contain all the requisite information and all class members who attempted to submit a claim online that did not go through for whatever reason."

Flynn says, "As part of that process, each class member who receives a deficiency notice will have 30 days to submit a completed claim form." Since none of our editors are class members, Flynn told us he would inform Doug Clayburg when the notices have been sent.

When Judge Stephen E. Balogh approved the final settlement on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, he mentioned that only 2,300 claims had been sent in. That's a typical response rate for class action lawsuits, which usually offer much smaller payments than this one. Now it turns out the actual number was higher.

Another attorney, Ed Manzke, has also been investigating the problem of missing claims. Though he didn't keep a count of how many residents he referred back to the claims administrator, he presumably convinced them to stop replying to these residents with statements such as "You are not eligible" or "It is too late."

However, this "second chance" only applies to those who filed their claims before the September 12, deadline. It doesn't apply to those who didn't file at all or who didn't live within a three-mile radius of the Chemtool factory. In mid-June 2024, more than 6,000 people were sent a letter inviting them to file their claim online or to download a claim form from the website.

But Flynn says, "This process should capture all those class members" whose claims were incomplete or lost.

Flynn doesn't know the exact number of missed claims. Flynn says, "While Ed and I do not have the precise number yet since Analytics is still going through the claims data, it is more than 24" which was Manzke's original count.

Residents could receive their payments between December 2024 and January 2025.

Flynn and Manzke are two of the nine personal injury attorneys representing Stateline residents and businesses in the class action lawsuit. Based in Chicago, Flynn specializes in health and the environment. Besides the Chemtool fire, his cases have involved PFAS contamination in Cordova, Illinois and carcinogenic chlorinated solvents in Union, Illinois.