The parents of a Massachusetts man who died after drinking a product called “Ethanol Extraction” have won a round in their fight to access insurance coverage, after Indiana’s Court of Appeals ruled the insurer wrongly classified their son’s death as a pollution claim to limit its payout.
In 2018, Timothy Parsons died after drinking a product labeled as 190-proof grain alcohol but actually contained high levels of toxic methanol. The product was made by Glycerin Traders and marketed by its affiliate, Lake Michigan Distilling Company, both based in LaPorte, Indiana. The case is Parsons v. Crum & Forster Specialty Insurance Company.
The methanol contamination traced back to a 2016 shipment of roughly 6,500 gallons of denatured alcohol that Glycerin Traders’ owner, Dennis Zeedyk, purchased from a middleman, according to the ruling. That supplier had sourced the alcohol from a cargo barge cleaning company, which had combined leftover industrial alcohol from multiple shipments into large holding containers. The resulting mixture had a pungent odor and a slight yellow tint. Without testing the mixture, Mr. Zeedyk distilled it multiple times to remove the smell and color, then bottled and sold it as safe for human consumption, the ruling said…