As a pipefitter worked from a lift at SABIC Innovative Plastics’ massive Posey County, Indiana, facility in February, he got hit with a toxic surprise: Phosgene gas, a compound made infamous as a chemical weapon during World War I, had leaked into the air and then into his lungs.
That’s according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of pipefitter Aaron Seed and his wife, Taylor Seed.
In a 15-page civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, the Seeds’ attorneys accused SABIC Innovative Plastics’ U.S.-based subsidiaries of “gross negligence” for failing to adequately protect workers exposed to “ultra-hazardous” conditions at the company’s facility west of Mount Vernon, Indiana, its largest manufacturing hub in North America…