WASHINGTON-The activities of cellular trade group CTIA under former president Thomas Wheeler are highlighted in a re-filed class-action lawsuit alleging wireless carriers, vendors and industry lobbyists failed to disclose to consumers that scientific studies differ on whether mobile-phone radiation can cause health problems.
The lawsuit, remanded in June by U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake to the Superior Court for the District of Columbia, names as defendants Audiovox Communications Corp., Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp., Ericsson Inc., Kyocera Wireless Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Telecommunications America and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (now CTIA-The Wireless Association).
The amended class-action lawsuit was filed Dec. 9 by lawyers on behalf of Sarah Dahlgren and others in the class.
The Dahlgren lawsuit has been largely overshadowed by higher-profile headset and brain-cancer lawsuits. The latter cases also reside in the D.C. Superior Court. Despite the lack of attention, the Dahlgren litigation could be more difficult for industry to defend because it targets carrier disclosure instead of claiming a link between cell phones and cancer or attacking the adequacy of the Federal Communications Commission’s radio-frequency radiation limits for human exposure.
Indeed, no lawsuit alleging cell-phone use as the cause of cancer has succeeded to date, and the FCC’s RF standard has been upheld by the courts. But the landscape has change in the past 18 months, with at least a dozen health-related lawsuits returned to state courts.
“This action is not meant to conclusively demonstrate the existence of safety risks posed by wireless handheld telephones or the level of any such safety risks,” Dahlgren’s lawyers said. “Rather, this action concentrates on defendants’ decision whether or not to communicate to the consumer information regarding the important safety debate raging within the industry (many details of which are known only to industry insiders), and/or the true meaning (or lack thereof) of their disclosed SAR (specific absorption rate) levels for each model. … Such disclosures would allow consumers to decide for themselves whether the safety debate warrants purchasing a wireless handheld telephone and if so, which wireless handheld telephone, or refraining from purchasing and/or using any wireless handheld telephone.”
When hit with class-action lawsuits to force wireless carriers to supply consumers with headsets to reduce their exposure to cell-phone radiation, mobile-phone industry lawyers argued-and Blake agreed-the actions were disguised attacks on the federal RF safety guidelines. Blake, though, was reversed by a divided 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The industry subsequently failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit ruling.
“Despite their knowledge of the relevant literature and research-including industry-funded studies-defendants continued to maintain that wireless handheld telephones posed no threat to human health despite mounting abundant evidence to the contrary,” stated Dahlgren’s lawyers. They pointed to a 1993 CTIA report stating in bold print, “Rest Assured. Cellular telephones are safe!” and the ensuing rebuke by a Food and Drug Administration official. FDA has legal jurisdiction over radiation-emitting devices, while the FCC enforces an adopted RF standard crafted by industry, government and military experts.
Dahlgren’s lawyers said Wheeler sent a memorandum in the early 1990s suggesting deletions of statements from a public manual on responsible cell-phone use then being drafted by a CTIA committee. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the deletions acknowledged or implied cell phones could pose a health risk.
“Do not operate your transportable cellular telephone when holding the antenna, or when any person is within 4 inches (10 centimeters of the antenna).’ Crossed out are the next statements: `Otherwise, you may impair call quality, may cause your phone to operate at a higher power level than is necessary, and may expose that person to RF energy in excess of the levels established by the updated ANSI (America National Standards Institute) standard. … If you want to limit RF exposure even further, you may choose to control the duration of your calls or maintain a distance from the antenna of more than 4 inches (10 centimeters).”‘
While there are studies that suggest harmful biological effects from mobile-phone radiation, U.S. and international government health officials say research to date has not established a clear connection between cell phones and cancer. However, in view of studies showing biological consequences, authorities say that more research is needed to better understand whether cell phones pose a health risk.
