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In October 2025, Joe Lanni and his team at the Fuchsberg firm successfully recovered a seven-figure award for a 64-year-old L.I. man in a toxic tort case about exposure to dry-cleaning chemicals. Joe argued that the client developed multiple myeloma after unknowingly breathing in vapors from a “cocktail of carcinogenic dry-cleaning chemicals” in the indoor air of his card store. “Carcinogens” are cancer-causing substances.
In the case, Joe and colleague Neal Bhushan, investigator Andrew Lanni and paralegal Rhonda Sanchez combed through hundreds of documents to discover that their client had been breathing in the vapors from toxic dry-cleaning chemicals leaking from a nearby business that made him ill. They showed that the cancer-causing dry-cleaning chemicals contaminated the soil and groundwater under and around the client’s store releasing vapors that polluted the indoor air. The case resulted in a $1,000,000+ settlement. More details on this story can be found below.
Joe argued that the client was exposed to five (5) carcinogenic chemicals used in dry-cleaning that had contaminated the soil, groundwater and indoor air under, around and inside his card store in a shopping center. The toxic chemical contamination came from dry-cleaning operations on adjacent property owned, managed and leased by the defendants. Joe further argued that our client’s 15-year exposure to the dry-cleaning chemicals caused or contributed to his development of multiple myeloma.
The five toxic chemicals that leaked from the dry-cleaning business were tetrachloroethylene (PCE or Perc), trichloroethylene (or TCE), benzene, methylene chloride, and toluene. Tetrachloroethylene was the primary indoor air pollutant accounting for the highest concentrations among the toxic vapors in the indoor air. Trichloroethylene had the second highest concentrations in the air. Both tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene are globally recognized as carcinogens by scientists and physicians around the world, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and CDC’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Scientific and medical literature on epidemiological and toxicological studies also link the other chemicals — benzene, methylene chloride, and toluene — to cancer.
The client unknowingly breathed the indoor air of his workplace which was polluted with the “cocktail of carcinogenic dry-cleaning chemicals” during the period 1999–2014. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and consequently underwent spinal fusion surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and stem cell transplant before the disease went into remission. The client continues to undergo medical surveillance to check for multiple myeloma recurrence. He also suffers from the permanent side effects of chemotherapy which include limb pain. The $1,000,000+ settlement was negotiated after only one deposition in the case.
