Victims of the humidifier disinfectant disaster lost a damages lawsuit they filed against the manufacturer Oxy Reckitt Benckiser.
The Seoul Central District Court Civil Agreement Division 30 (Presiding Judge Kim Seok-beom, Director General judge) on the 15th ruled against the 26 plaintiffs in a damages suit of 1.1 billion won filed against Oxy.
Twenty-four of the plaintiffs accepted the court's settlement recommendation on the 27th.
The humidifier disinfectant disaster refers to a case in which humidifier disinfectant products first released in 1994 caused users to suffer lung damage and other harms. Victims, mainly children and pregnant women, began to emerge in the early 2000s, but were left as cases of "an unknown lung disease" until 2011, when an epidemiological investigation by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency confirmed a causal link between the disinfectant and lung damage.
Afterward, in Jan. 2018, a former Oxy chief was given a six-year prison sentence by the Supreme Court on charges including occupational negligence resulting in death. The government on the 24th said it would designate the humidifier disinfectant case as a "social disaster," 15 years after the scandal first erupted.
The ruling came a little over six years after the suit was filed in Sept. 2019.