$23 Million for Poisoning Children Suit

Seymour, INA 16-year-long battle between the owners of an apartment building and the former tenants who claimed their children had been poisoned by the careless use of a pesticide finally ended with a $23 million verdict awarded to the Eibling family. Finally, there's a resolution at hand for both the Eiblings and their attorney, who pounded against what must have seemed like at times a brick wall.

For veteran attorney Roger Pardieck, there were countless hours of complex legal arguments that went all the way to the Supreme Court and finally back to Indiana where the Eiblings' story began.

A few months after moving into the Prestwick apartments in North Albany, Indiana, in 1994, Todd and Cynthia Eibling noticed startling changes in their two toddlers. Their son Alex and daughter Christina, who had been happy and healthy, began having seizures and started deteriorating mentally and physically.

"When they moved in the children were fine," says Pardieck a soft-spoken man who has been practicing law for 35 years in Indiana. "They met all the milestones that you would expect children to meet at six months and four years of age."

Doctors had no explanation.

The Eiblings were desperately looking for answers when one day they saw the building caretaker spraying pesticide in the building. "Mr. Eibling called the poison control centre and found out that symptoms of exposure to the pesticide caused convulsions and seizures," says Pardieck.

The likely cause of the problem was exposure to Creol-O, a chemical made from the pesticide Diazinon. It was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2004.

"The case against the apartment owner and the management company turned on whether there had been a proper application of the pesticide," says Pardieck. "Or should the pesticide have been used at all."

"The defendants maintained that there had never been a case reported where the chemicals involved with this pesticide were known to cause the injuries our clients suffered—namely epilepsy, mental retardation, development delay," says Pardieck. "In a nutshell those were the issues."

Despite huge numbers of issues confronting the case, Pardieck carried on.

Christina Eibling needs help with every aspect of daily life. Her brother Alex functions and attends school but has serious challenges mentally and socially.

The jury awarded $500,000 each to Todd and Cynthia Eibling, $16 million to their daughter, Christina, and $6.5 million to their son Alex.


Roger Pardieck is the founder of the Pardieck Law Firm. Pardieck is a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an elite group of 100 trial attorneys from across the US who have tried at least 100 jury trials and received verdicts of one million dollars or more in three or more cases.