Hundreds of meningitis victims and families could split millions in a proposed settlement over the now-closed New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts.
The families of more than 60 people killed by bad batches of pain steroids made by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, and another 700-plus sickened learned Thursday they stand to collect $135 million in total through a complex legal settlement involving insurance and company funds.
But as you can imagin, cash only goes so far for those mourning the sudden, shocking deaths of people they loved, such as Meghan Handy of North East, Maryland. Her mother Brenda Rozek was among the first people to die of fungal meningitis in September 2012, after receiving contaminated steroid medications made by NECC.
"I think there'll never be enough justice for everything that has happened," Handy said in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon. Her mother, who worked at a home for veterans and was widely rememberd for her devotion and generosity, suffered a swift and stunning illness after receiving the NECC medication. "She could barely even speak to anyone because her head was just hurting her so bad. She was having seizures where she was losing different parts and wasn't able to open her eyes anymore. They had to then put her on a breathing tube. She couldn't breathe on her own anymore," Handy said. Brenda Rozek was 51 when she died and left her parents, husband, two daughters, three brothers, and two grandchildren and many other family members.
Kiersten Taylor, a bankruptcy attorney with Boston law firm Brown, Rudnick LLP, who helped negotiate the $135 million settlement, said she expects it will become clearer in the spring how much various victims of the NECC disaster stand to get apiece.
"We are 100 percent, beyond a doubt positive that this is the absolutely best result we could have gotten," Taylor said in an interview with NECN’s Jeff Saperstone and Chris Campbell.
But, she acknowledged, "It’s monetary justice. It's the best you can do with money."
For her part, Handy said, "Honestly, I don't feel like any amount of money is going to be justice. I feel like the people that are behind this need to be, you know prosecuted. Those are the people that need to be put away. That, to me, is somewhat justice. I don't think there's any way that I could ever say there's enough justice, because it's just something that didn't need to happen. No amount of money is going to make anything better."
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