A jury has awarded $25 million to a Los Angeles man who filed a lawsuit against ConAgra of Chicago, alleging that its butter-flavored Pam cooking spray caused a rare chronic lung disease that required a double lung transplant.
A Los Angeles Superior Court decision last week found that ConAgra failed to adequately warn consumers of the potential dangers of inhaling fumes from Pam cooking spray that contained diacetyl, a buttery-smelling chemical linked to respiratory illnesses.
During the trial, ConAgra said it removed the ingredient from its Pam formula in 2009.
Roland Esparza, 58, who has regularly used butter-flavored Pam since the 1990s, filed a lawsuit in 2022 claiming the discontinued ingredient was responsible for his condition, his Chicago attorney said.
“He was a health freak, a bodybuilder, a martial artist,” his attorney, Jacob Plattenberg, said Tuesday. “He eats a lot of protein, he eats a lot of eggs, he cooks everything on the stove. So he uses it multiple times a day.”
Esparza was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a severe progressive respiratory disease commonly known as “popcorn lung.” The disease was first discovered in workers at a microwave popcorn factory who inhaled the butter-flavored chemical diacetyl during the production process.
While there have been several successful consumer cases against microwave popcorn manufacturers, this is the first popcorn lung ruling against a cooking spray manufacturer, Plattenberger said.
ConAgra plans to challenge the potentially precedent-setting $25 million prize.
“We disagree with and are disappointed with the jury’s verdict,” Conagra said in a statement Tuesday. “PAM butter-flavored cooking spray is safe and has been diacetyl-free for nearly two decades. We intend to pursue all available legal avenues to challenge the verdict.”
In the new millennium, the use of diacetyl as a butter flavoring came under greater scrutiny after workers at several Midwestern popcorn plants fell ill. In 2004, Eric Peoples, who worked at a Missouri factory, won $20 million against the manufacturer of a butter-flavored chemical that he claimed caused his lung disease.
In 2012, Wayne Watson, a microwave popcorn consumer from Colorado, won $7 million in a lawsuit against manufacturer Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. and several retailers because he claimed he developed popcorn lung from years of inhaling butter chemicals.
The use of diacetyl in many products has been reduced, but the American Lung Association warns that the chemical and substitutes may be present in e-cigarettes, potentially serving as a link between e-cigarettes and popcorn lung.
Pam nonstick cooking spray was created by Chicago advertising executive Arthur Meyerhoff and became a kitchen staple in the 1960s.
Conagra acquired Pam as part of its $2.9 billion acquisition of International Home Foods in 2000.
In 2019, ConAgra was hit with a series of lawsuits alleging that cans of Pam cooking spray caught fire, severely burning users. In 2023, an Illinois jury ordered ConAgra to pay $7.1 million to a Pennsylvania woman who was burned in a 2017 kitchen fire caused by a can of Pam.
Now, ConAgra has been ordered to pay Esparza $25 million for years after he unintentionally breathed in diacetyl from a previous butter-flavored Pam formula. Plattenberg said Esparza hopes to be on the lung transplant list “soon,” but time may be running out.
“We think this is the right sentence,” Plattenberg said. “Our client is a very good man who did nothing wrong and was treated unfairly and hopefully this will help. Nothing is going to bring him back to health and even if he had a transplant it wouldn’t be a great life but it would give him a few more years to live.”
