Janitor Sues Westgate Hotel Over PCB Spill

A janitor who worked at the Little America Westgate Hotel has filed a $50-million lawsuit against the hotel and several of its officers claiming he was contaminated with toxic PCBs.

According to the complaint filed last week in Superior Court, George Guerin, 30, was contaminated over a three-year period when he was ordered to clean up PCB leaks from a faulty electric transformer with mops, rags, solvent and cat litter.

Richard W. Tentler, Guerin’s Santa Barbara attorney, said that federal and state laws require that protective clothing be worn when cleaning up spills of the highly toxic oil. The only protective item worn by Guerin when he cleaned up the spills was a rubber glove, said Tentler.

Before the Environmental Protection Agency banned their production in 1977, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were widedly used as insulators in electric transformers. The oily chemical is suspected of causing cancer.

Guerin alleged in the complaint that as a result of the PCB exposure he has lost his teeth and suffered damage to his immune, reproductive, nervous and hepatic systems. He is under a physician’s care and unable to return to the job he held for eight years, said Tentler.

The suit alleges that hotel officials intentionally left one of the transformers open, “allowing toxic vapors from heated PCB oil to be released into the air.” The transformers are on the hotel’s 20th floor.

David Geerdes, attorney for the hotel, declined to comment.