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RF Health
Lawsuits Move To Baltimore Judge
RCR Wireless News
Journalist: Jeffrey Silva
November 12, 2001
The wireless industry as early as this week is expected to get hit with the
first wave of lawsuits claiming mobile phones caused the brain cancer of a
former Motorola Inc. technician and other heavy cell-phone users.
The litigation likely will be followed by a public-interest lawsuit that alleges
federal regulatory agencies have failed to protect the nation's 123 million
wireless subscribers from radiation health risks. Those agencies include the
Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Federal
Communications Commission.
The lawsuits will be filed by a team that includes Baltimore lawyer Joanne Suder
and two high-profile Michigan-based trial lawyers, Mike Morganroth and Sheldon
Miller. The next cancer lawsuit is expected be filed later this week in the
District of Columbia by Michael Murray, a worker who tested mobile phones for
Motorola during the 1990s.
Murray has a workers' compensation claim pending in the Illinois Industrial
Commission. A lawyer representing Murray in that proceeding would not confirm
whether a lawsuit will be filed this week.
Similar workers' compensation claims have been filed in California by Mark Hart,
a former global marketing director for Neopoint Inc., and by Sharesa Price, a
former cell-phone programmer for Advanced Communications Systems, a U.S.
Cellular Corp. agent.
At least four additional phone-cancer lawsuits also could be filed in D.C.
Superior court by the end of this week or next week, according to a source close
to the litigation. The source said more phone-cancer lawsuits would be filed in
groups of five during the next six months.
All the lawsuits, which will name as defendants various carriers and
manufacturers as well as the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet
Association and the American National Standards Institute, are expected to be
filed in D.C. Superior Court. There is no cap on damages in the District of
Columbia.
Last year, Suder filed an $800 million lawsuit on behalf of Christopher Newman,
a neurologist and a heavy cell-phone user who was diagnosed with brain cancer.
The case, set for a key hearing in February that will focus on the use of
scientific experts, was transferred to fellow Baltimore trial lawyer Peter
Angelos.
Angelos, who has won hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits against tobacco
companies and asbestos manufacturers, is suing makers of audiotape erasing
machines, lead paint companies and other firms. In addition, Angelos and other
attorneys around the country are involved in five lawsuits aimed at forcing the
wireless industry to provide hands-6.00 headsets with mobile phones and to
compensate subscribers who already purchased such devices.
Class-action headset lawsuits initially were filed in five state courts before
industry got the cases moved to federal courts. Last month, a federal judicial
panel transferred all the headset cases to a Maryland federal court. The cases
are now in the hands of Judge Catherine C. Blake, the same Baltimore judge who
is handling the Newman phone-cancer case.
Other phone-cancer cases are pending in Georgia, Nevada and California.
Industry's victory in an unsuccessful cancer lawsuit brought by former Motorola
engineer Robert Kane is being challenged in an Illinois appeals court. A final
hearing on partial settlement in a privacy-phone health case is scheduled for
Nov. 20 in an Illinois state court in Chicago. The settlement would fund the
creation of a registry of wireless subscribers who believe they have been
injured by cell-phone radiation.
Plaintiffs lawyers may have suffered a setback of sorts as a result of a recent
editorial by five scientists in a leading Swedish newspaper that was highly
critical of a study conducted by scientist Lennart Hardell. Hardell, who
received a lot of media attention after publicizing an epidemiology study that
found cell-phone users tended to get tumors on the side of the head where phones
are used, is an expert in the Newman case and likely will serve in the same
capacity in upcoming phone-cancer lawsuits. "This kind of interpretation
seems bizarre in biological terms and is probably based on chance findings. ...
We think it is generally wrong to discuss pilot studies in the media, as the
main study will, by definition, not have been concluded," stated the
scientists in Svenska Dagbladet/Brannpunkt.
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