To the Editor:
On the front page of your Christmas day issue was an article headlined “Judge largely dismisses RF health lawsuit.” The lawsuit asks for damages from brain cancer supposedly caused by cellular telephone use. The news that a federal district judge essentially dismissed the lawsuit is remarkable because it would be a devastating and unusual disposition of the case at this early point in the proceedings. In support of this conclusion, you quote CTIA’s Mike Altschul as saying “[c]oupled last week with the release of the epidemiology studies and the judge’s order showing reliance on those studies, this [order] reflects that the plaintiffs have not been able to demonstrate a theory of causation.” These statements and your supposition that the case was on the whole rejected by the court are incorrect.
The plaintiff’s complaint sets forth nine causes of action, or counts, against nine named defendants. The judge dismissed the action against three defendants upon finding that they had insufficient connection with the events claimed to have caused injury to the plaintiff. She found that two counts, based on allegations of fraud and conspiracy against the six other defendants, did not contain enough details and granted the request by the plaintiff’s attorney for time to amend the complaint to set forth additional facts. The judge also dismissed the claims against CTIA and TIA that relate to the manufacture and use of the plaintiff’s cellular phone however, granted the plaintiff leave to amend his complaint to state additional facts to establish negligence claims against them. Notably, the judge did not dismiss seven counts against the manufacturer and carrier defendants at the heart of the complaint.
The issue of causation is the main issue in this case-just as it was in the asbestos cases, the tobacco cases and other health-related cases. There is certainly enough evidence of causation on hand to raise deep concerns on the part of the public and the government agencies responsible for our safety. The potential harm caused by your article is that government officials and other readers will wrongly believe that a federal judge concluded that there is not a causal link between cell-phone use and brain cancer. This gives false credibility to the industry’s argument that cell-phone use has been proven to be safe-it has not. We think that it is prudent to assume that there is a health risk associated with cell-phone use until more is known.
Carl Hilliard
Wireless Consumers Alliance
