Time was when all roads led to Baltimore federal court, where U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake oversees everything from elevator operations to cell-phone health suits. Blake, appointed administrative judge in October 2001 by Chief Judge Frederic Smalkin, still holds sway over elevators and lingering brain-cancer suits that are dead on arrival.
Why mobile-phone health suits have traveled one direction-south-under Blake remains a topic of hot dispute.
The mobile-phone industry believes the answer is straight forward: Catherine the Great (she made the short list for RCR’s Person of the Year in 2002), concluded that science didn’t support sending Christopher J. Newman’s $800 million brain-cancer lawsuit to trial.
Health activists remain dumbfounded. They, like industry, are religious in their views. Did Blake have an axe to grind with Peter Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles owner whose law firm is behind the Newman case and other wireless health actions? Perhaps she was she irked about a bonehead trade by the Birds’ front office or angry about the cost of hot dogs and parking at Camden Yards.
Conflicts of interest? None, legally. Blake owns no stock, but holds a slew of mutual funds. Some, in the T. Rowe Price family, have names like Growth Stock, New Asia, New Era, Science & Technology and Spectrum Income. Don’t let the last one throw you. It has nothing to do with wireless or telecom or high-tech. That is not true of the other funds.
Blake’s court is not the final resting place for wireless health suits, which have taken a U turn on Interstate 95 and headed south about a 150 miles to Richmond, Va., home of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
The Newman case was to have been heard last week by the 4th Circuit, which happens to be handling an appeal involving suspected 9/11 terrorist Zarcarias Moussaoui. Oral argument in Newman is now scheduled for September. Despite the Moussaoui factor, the 4th Circuit managed to make time to hear oral argument in a cell-phone tower siting case.
The 4th Circuit, considered the most conservative in the land, previously sided with local officials in siting litigation. Whether the court will embrace states rights in class-action headset cases booted by Blake is another question.
And Newman? On paper, the right-leaning 4th Circuit is apt to look askance at a case judges may conclude is more about the need for tort reform than possible cell-phone radiation hazards. But who knows? The 4th Circuit worries the Bush administration in the Moussaoui case. Should wireless lawyers be worried too?
