WASHINGTON-A major personal injury lawsuit is expected to be filed this week in Illinois against Motorola Inc. and possibly others by a former technician with the company who claims his brain tumor was caused by mobile-phone radiation.
The suit, the second in the past four months to allege a mobile-phone-cancer link, is expected be followed by similar lawsuits in Maryland, Texas and Georgia in coming weeks in what has mushroomed into a new wave of health litigation against the cellular industry.
The litigation is being orchestrated by Joanne Suder, a media savvy Baltimore lawyer with medical malpractice expertise who has joined forces with law firms in New Orleans and Atlanta to pursue mobile-phone-cancer lawsuits across the country.
In August, Suder filed an $800 million mobile-phone-cancer lawsuit on behalf of 41-year-old Baltimore neurologist Christopher Newman against Motorola, Verizon Communications, SBC Communications Inc., the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association and the Telecommunications Industry Association.
The mobile-phone industry also is entangled in a class-action lawsuit in New Orleans that claims wireless manufacturers and carrier should have designed phones better to protect against health risks. In Chicago, a class-action lawsuit alleges privacy invasion and an industry coverup of health risks in connection with a mobile phone-cancer epidemiology study funded by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.
In the nation’s capital, four parties have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling upholding mobile-phone and base-station RF radiation safety guidelines of the Federal Communications Commission. Responses to the petitions are due Dec. 4.
“The difficult issue is that millions and millions of dollars are being spent to convince people that phones are safe. We cannot allow that to happen without one word of response,” said Suder.
This week, Suder and her legal team will file a civil suit-possibly in Cook County, Ill.-on behalf of 33-year-old Michael Murray. Murray worked for 10 years as a mobile-phone trouble shooter for Motorola in Libertyville, Ill., and at other locations before being diagnosed last fall with a potentially deadly brain tumor. He had surgery to remove the cancer last November.
Murray, who lives with his wife and daughter in Chicago, said Motorola denied him workers’ compensation because he couldn’t prove mobile-phone radiation caused his brain cancer. He said he got frustrated and settled for disability.
Last Tuesday, lawyers for Murray filed a workers’ compensation complaint with the Illinois Industrial Commission. The complaint, which was obtained by RCR Wireless News, states that “exposure to cell-phone radiation” caused the cancer and resulted in total disability to Murray.
“We don’t comment on pending or perspective lawsuits,” said Jo-Anne Basile, vice president for external and industry relations at CTIA. “We are guided by the science and the science continues to reaffirm the fact there are no adverse health effects from the use of wireless phones.”
At the same time, recent research has found DNA breaks, genetic damage and other bioffects from cell-phone radiation.
One of three papers in the British medical journal, The Lancet, is expected to further muddy the waters. One paper suggests neurological effects could be connected to mobile-phone use. Researchers said there is not enough data to make any firm conclusions.
“I think the thing that’s missing from these papers is the most important thing of all and that is that 105 million people in the United States and a half-billion people worldwide are using a product every day that we don’t understand biologically,” said Dr. George Carlo, the epidemiologist who headed a six-year, $27 million mobile-phone research program before breaking with the cellular industry last year over positive results in experiments.
The research, conducted by Wireless Technology Research L.L.C., was funded by mobile-phone carriers and manufacturers.
“Even if the risk is very small, it is going to affect millions and millions of people. And that is something that should be brought forward in every discussion. We’ve never seen a technology used by so many people so fast,” said Carlo, who in a new book (Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age) co-authored by syndicated columnist Martin Schram documents how the cellular industry has managed the health issue for the past seven years.
The Food and Drug Administration, which is working with CTIA to attempt to replicate research conducted by WTR that found genetic damage from mobile-phone use, says there is no clear and present danger from phones, but there is insufficient research to concludes wireless devices are safe.
Some in Congress want federal funding for more cell-phone health research.
A Motorola spokesman declined to comment on the upcoming suits, but did respond to an internal confidential document written by Motorola engineer Paul Moller in 1995. The paper stressed the need to keep mobile-phone antennas “as far from the user as possible” and to re-engineer antennas. “We need new antenna designs!” said Moller in the paper .
Motorola’s Norm Sandler said Moller’s antenna references were part of a 30-page tutorial on compliance with federal radiation protection safety guidelines and had nothing to do with health risk. “This should not be construed as directions to move antennas away from the head,” said Sandler.
Late Wednesday, ABC News was expected to report that Disney has decided to stop licensing mobile-phone face plates with cartoon characters until science determines the absence of any risk to youths.
