Conagra ordered to pay $25 million in lawsuit alleging Pam cooking spray caused lung disease

A jury awarded a Los Angeles man $25 million in a lawsuit against Chicago-based Conagra alleging its butter-flavored Pam cooking spray caused a rare chronic lung disease that will require a double lung transplant. 

The verdict last week in the Superior Court of Los Angeles found that Conagra did not adequately warn consumers about the potential dangers of inhaling fumes from Pam cooking spray containing diacetyl, a butter-flavored chemical linked to respiratory illness. 

During the trial, Conagra said it removed the ingredient from its Pam formulation in 2009. 

Roland Esparza, 58, who had used butter-flavored Pam regularly since the 1990s, filed the lawsuit in 2022, alleging the since-discontinued ingredient is responsible for his condition, according to his Chicago-based attorney. 

“He was a big health nut, bodybuilder, martial artist,” his attorney, Jacob Plattenberger, said Tuesday. “He was eating a lot of protein, eating a lot of eggs, and he cooked everything on his stove top. And so he was using it multiple times a day.”

Esparza was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a severe and progressive respiratory disease better known as “popcorn lung.” The disease was first identified in workers at a microwave popcorn plant who inhaled the butter-flavored chemical diacetyl during the manufacturing process. 

While there have been several successfu...