Rockdale County

BioLab chemical fire: Conyers car dealership suing BioLab over impact on business

By Sam Sachs, WSBTV.com

(WSBTV.com News Staff)

By Sam Sachs, WSBTV.com

CONYERS, Ga. — After a chemical fire at the Conyers BioLab facility impacted county residents and disrupted life and business, multiple lawsuits have been filed against the company.

Adding to the various court cases now pending, a Nissan dealership in Conyers is suing BioLab and parent company KIK Consumer Products.

The federal class-action lawsuit claims the community had to deal with “Massive amounts of smoke...containing toxic chemicals such as chlorine, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen bromide and phosgene,” after two fires occurred at the plant in the same day, one of which was caused by “water from the sprinkler system sprayed onto water reactive chemicals triggering an explosive chemical reaction.”

The emergency response included a mass evacuation in Conyers and a county-wide shelter-in-place order that lasted for six days, though that shifted to overnight shelter orders only after Sept. 30 and ended Oct. 4. The shelter-in-place remains in effect for people and businesses within a two-mile radius.

The car dealership lawsuit notes the Conyers facility’s history of fires and toxic chemical releases and related evacuations, injuries and property damage.

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For the most recent incident, Conyers Nissan’s court filing says 93,000 residents were impacted, along with 2,200 businesses, with the effects of the “smoke and chemical plume” being so large it could be seen from 30 miles away and causing a shutdown of traffic on both state and federal highways.

The car dealership is less than three miles from the BioLab facility in Conyers and accuses the fire and chemical smoke plume forcing it to close sales and services and lose income as a result for three days, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1.

The additional shelter-in-place order that continued through Oct. 4 was also said to have caused ongoing business impacts to the Conyers Nissan location, leading to “substantial lost income, sales and profits.”

As a class-action lawsuit, Conyers Nissan said it is defining the group as “all entities and businesses transacting business in Georgia, that incurred damages as a result” of the Sept. 29 BioLab Conyers Facility Fire.

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With the proposed class including thousands of entities and businesses, both in Rockdale County and surrounding communities, according to the lawsuit, the exact number of class members is not yet known.

The lawsuit says that while it has not yet been fully determined if BioLab’s facility was “negligently maintained, controlled, oversaw, inspected, or monitored,” and it was not yet known if the defendants “negligently manufactured, maintained, controlled, oversaw, inspected, or monitored hazardous chemicals,” they were suing due to the widespread impacts of the fire and explosion at the plant.

Additionally, the lawsuit states courts will have to determine if BioLab and KIK:

  • Owe a duty of care to plaintiffs and class members
  • If BioLab breached their duty of care
  • If BioLab created a nuisance
  • If BioLab’s actions were negligent
  • If BioLab’s actions count as trespass
  • If BioLab’s “misconduct, negligence, and recklessness and breaches of legal duties owned to entities and businesses of the community resulted in damages”
  • If BioLab’s actions were due to ”willful misconduct, negligence, and recklessness and breaches of legal duties owned to entities and businesses of the community” resulted in damages owed
  • If BioLab’s actions were examples of “willful misconduct, negligence, and recklessness and breaches of legal duties owned to entities and businesses of the community” and should result in punitive or exemplary damages

The lawsuit says BioLab and KIK have a duty to ensure proper storage of the hazardous chemicals used at the facility to maintain safety for the surrounding communities and that the “likelihood of contamination of neighboring areas, exposure to their occupants and disruption to business activities” meant the company had a duty to operate in a way that would “prevent it from exploding” and contaminating the air around the site.

As a result, the lawsuit accuses BioLab of negligence for failing to prevent the emitting of dangerous volumes of harmful chemicals or using safe methods to control the facility and prevent “explosions, ignitions and runaway chemical reactions,” among other safety methods detailed at length in the court records.

The court record details accusations that BioLab and KIK “through their knowledge of each other’s operations relating to their Conyers Facility, and their financial and other interests and incentives in each other’s operation of their Conyers Facility, consciously and deliberately pursued a common plan and design to conduct reckless activities and are therefore jointly liable” in the case.

Similarly, the lawsuit also accuses the company of conduct showing they “acted maliciously, with aggravated or egregious fraud, and/or intentional disregard for Plaintiffs’ rights so as to warrant the imposition of punitive damages.”

Based on their claims of negligence, nuisance and damage from the BioLab incident on Sept. 29, the Conyers Nissan is demanding a jury trial on behalf of themselves and all other potential co-plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit.

Channel 2 Action News has requested comment from representatives for BioLab and KIK Consumer Products and are waiting for their response.

However, BioLab has released a statement saying their top priority is community safety and that air quality is being monitored at the plant site and in the community.

BioLab spokesperson Daniel Hoadley told Channel 2′s Courtney Francisco that “Our focus is neutralizing the wet chemical product to mitigate the continued reaction and that “we are also working to remove any debris carried off-site by the wind, and activated a team tasked with collecting debris.”

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