ENV: double quotes not stripped

Using this Dockerfile for neo4j and ch-image v0.24 I got the following error:

 11 RUN ['/bin/sh', '-c', 'addgroup --system neo4j && adduser --system --no-create-home --home "${NEO4J_HOME}" --ingroup neo4j neo4j']
Adding group `neo4j' (GID 101) ...
Done.
adduser: The home dir must be an absolute path.
error: build failed: current version of --force wouldn't help
error: build failed: RUN command exited with 1

Interestingly enough, the variable NEO4J_HOME is defined in the Dockerfile and is an absolute path:

ENV NEO4J_HOME='"/var/lib/neo4j"'

When building using docker I get:

Step 4/13 : RUN addgroup --system neo4j && adduser --system --no-create-home --home "${NEO4J_HOME}" --ingroup neo4j neo4j
 ---> Running in b72d42b6ee75
Adding group `neo4j' (GID 101) ...
Done.
Warning: The home dir /var/lib/neo4j you specified can't be accessed: No such file or directory
Adding system user `neo4j' (UID 101) ...
Adding new user `neo4j' (UID 101) with group `neo4j' ...
Not creating home directory `/var/lib/neo4j'.
Removing intermediate container b72d42b6ee75
 ---> 082f599d95c9
Step 5/13 : COPY ./local-package/* /tmp/

I'm not sure how this is being handled by docker. Maybe it's more graceful handling of the return status from adduser?