Nearly six years after it started, the mold lawsuit against St. Charles Unit District 303 will essentially start over again.
Kane County Judge Michael Colwell ruled Friday the lawsuit can add 29 plaintiffs, many of them new.
The lawsuit had been pared down from multiple plaintiffs to one remaining student, Lindsey Scharpenter, who left St. Charles North in 1998.
 
At one point it appeared the suit would conclude. But when Scharpenter’s claim of chronic sinus and respiratory pain brought on by her time at North was recently upheld, the door was cracked for others to join in.
All 29 of the plaintiffs are students. The original lawsuit filed in 2001 had a mix of students, teachers and cafeteria workers. That group was whittled down when many were unable to prove their illnesses were related to mold at the school.

In 2003 a Kane County judge ruled teachers had to sue under federal workers’ compensation laws, not in county court.

A few of the new plaintiffs are from the original suit, but the remainder are individuals who had expressed interest in the lawsuit years ago, helping them meet the statute of limitations.

The student plaintiffs claim a variety of illnesses were caused from exposure to mold in the school.
“It’s a laundry list,” said Craig Mielke, a Geneva attorney representing the students. “Everything from sniffling and irritation from allergies to more serious illness like Lindsey has.”

Since each of the new plaintiffs has different illnesses and were in school at various times, Mielke said each case will have to be researched. It is akin to working on 29 individual lawsuits against the district. It is not officially a class-action suit.

The lawsuit alleges the district failed to address environmental concerns at the school. For more than 10 years before mold forced the school’s closure in March 2001, some teachers and students complained of fatigue, headaches and breathing difficulties when in the building.

In 1997, parents and teachers unsuccessfully pushed for testing of the building. Partial tests were done in 1998 and 1999. Members of the school’s air quality task force formally requested a comprehensive room-by-room study for mold in January 1999 and again in May 2000.

Inspections in 2001 found mold growing behind walls because of problems with the heating and air conditioning system. The school was closed for 18 months and $28 million was spent to remediate the problem.
Attempts failed in May 2004 at opening the lawsuit to a class-action status for the approximately 3,000 students and 350 staff who were in the building during the infection.

But state law has changed since then, opening the door to the new 29 plaintiffs, Mielke said.
The school district unsuccessfully argued against adding the new plaintiffs, claiming they were too late to join the lawsuit. The district also argued that to join in Scharpenter’s lawsuit the new plaintiffs needed a stronger connection to her than simply attending the same school as her.

It is unclear how many mold cases are pending in the United States. The Insurance Information Institute reported 1,050 mold lawsuits in 2000 and 14,706 in 2001. Not all cases involved school buildings.

http://www.dailyherald.com/news/kanestory.asp?id=282197&cc=k&tc=&t


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