Dear Editor:
Peter Angelos, the U.S. attorney leading several lawsuits against the mobile-phone industry, has helped to effectively outlaw products from asbestos to breast implants, and only the vast deep pockets of the tobacco industry have prevented him from doing the same to cigarettes. Now this high priest of the mass tort has his sights set on the wireless telecom industry, with damage claims that will run into the billions.
Angelos, the high-flying billionaire owner of U.S. baseball team Baltimore Orioles and scourge of the big-business defendant, is teaming up with that recurring partner of the plaintiff’s bar, the cancer claim. But where asbestos and cigarettes have been definitively identified as potential causes of lung cancer, breast implants and cell phones remain dubious causes of anything. Questionable science, though, has yet to stop or even slow these lions of the law, and in the case of cell phones, the science in question involves causal agents for a variety of brain tumors.
Angelos and his minions appear ready to accept unconfirmed reports that cell phones might contribute to the formation of brain cancers, rushing to file cases that serve more as consolidation vehicles than viable litigation. Taking a cue from his men at bat, Angelos is more interested in being first to the plate than in assuring the ultimate defensibility of his claims. Clearly hoping to score big victories outside the courtroom, where plaintiffs are more likely to be frightened by “what if” scenarios, Angelos is seeking billions with the billion or so he’s already made settling tobacco and asbestos claims on the courthouse steps. Confront him with solid, studied evidence and a legal mind the likes of David Boies, and Angelos may be less likely to leap at litigation.
Absent such a challenge from yet another industry that does not want bad press, and these cases of wireless transmission of brain tumors will be settled for undisclosed sums and token punishments. “Safe” headsets may be mandated in the terms, or “safer” doses of microwave transmission promised by the plaintiff firms. In any event, Angelos and his legal team will receive the lion’s share of any settlement dollars, followed by comparatively miniscule payments to class members and some very public hand-slapping, designed only to palliate lawmakers and the public.
The sad residue of such shakedown tactics is a lingering suspicion that settles on consumers and lawmakers, a pall that will certainly descend on this marvelous technology. Oddly, the attorneys behind these cases rarely go scathed. Rather, they vanish into the sunset of one case and re-emerge at the dawn of the next, always appearing the benevolent sheriffs, the keepers of law, order, and the public good, actively seeking and punishing evil-doers with billions on their balance sheets.
That no solid, defensible evidence exists in support of the claim that cellular phones cause cancer is no matter. Evidence against the breast implant industry was found similarly wanting, yet Dow Corning and other manufacturers paid billions in claims, and thousands of women endured unnecessary operations-hastily-executed implant removals-that have yet to be justified by findings of scientific fact. Implants may leak, fail, and may strain tissues surrounding the breast, but to this day, no one has proved that they cause cancer.
Likewise, no proof has appeared that cell phones produce brain tumors. But cell-phone users may find that they are forced to relinquish yet another legal product, a wonder of modern living, all because there’s gold, once again, in them there courthouses.
Michael J. Martin, MBA, MS
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