WASHINGTON-The mobile- phone industry last week opposed a proposed $1.4 million settlement in a health-related privacy lawsuit that provides funds for a registry to be headed by Dr. George Carlo, the epidemiologist who has clashed with industry since discovering genetic damage from phone radiation in experiments funded by cellular companies.
In papers filed last week with the Circuit Court of Cook County (Illinois), the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association and Epidemiology Resources Inc.-two of the defendants-said the proposed registry “raises significant questions as to both its validity and its ultimate use.” Motorola Inc. and Ameritech Mobile Communications Inc., two other defendants, said the registry has no connection to claims asserted in the litigation.
The 1995 class-action lawsuit, which was certified last year, claims privacy rights were violated when billing records of mobile-phone subscribers were examined without their knowledge as part of an epidemiology study conducted by EPI. Initially, plaintiffs in Busse et al. vs. Motorola Inc. also accused the industry of orchestrating a cover-up of health risks from mobile phones.
ERI was contracted by Wireless Technology Research L.L.C., an entity headed by Carlo that spent $28 million over six years investigating potential health risks-such as brain cancer-from mobile-phone radiation. Carlo was dismissed from the case, but WTR remains a defendant.
The proposed settlement, besides removing WTR from the litigation and earmarking $250,000 to establish a database of mobile-phone subscribers with suspected health problems, would set aside $150,000 to cover future legal fees for Carlo.
The deal also would make the $25 cost of Carlo and Martin Schram’s book-Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age-available to members of the class at half price. The class comprises approximately 40 million mobile-phone subscribers served by more than 200 cell-phone carriers.
In the book, the authors quote a Motorola official as being adamantly opposed to forming a registry for post-market surveillance of the nation’s 115 million cell phone users.
“Carlo’s book makes charges against Motorola and Ameritech Mobile that each vigorously denies, and also attacks the integrity of the Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission, members of Congress and the media,” said Motorola and Ameritech Mobile. “Those charges have never been tested in this or any other court. Despite this lack of judicial review, the proposed settlement notice and press release contain language implying that the court has considered and endorsed the contents of the book, which of course is not true.”
CTIA and ERI suggested Carlo’s relationship with Baltimore trial lawyer Peter Angelos calls into question Carlo’s motive for setting up the registry and the objectivity of research data that would be collected.
Angelos represents 42-year-old neurologist Christopher Newman in an $800 million cell phone-brain cancer lawsuit and is counsel in five lawsuits alleging the mobile-phone industry from the start should have equipped consumers with hands-free headsets to reduce the risk of radiation injury.
“The court should not play any role in sanctioning those activities nor permit them to be conducted in any manner that creates even the slightest impression that the court has endorsed those activities or has approved settlement proceeds to fund a project to be used by the plaintiff bar as a resources for unrelated litigation against the wireless telephone industry,” stated CTIA and ERI.
In a brief being filed today, Carlo’s lawyers are expected to reply that registry data itself cannot be biased-only the analysis of it can-and that none of the parties opposed to the settlement meet the legal threshold of being hurt by the deal.
Judge Stephen Schiller could rule on the proposed settlement at a July 3 hearing.
