WASHINGTON-A Georgia man last week filed lawsuit against mobile-phone giant Nokia Corp. and others, claiming cell phone use caused his brain cancer. The mobile-phone-cancer lawsuit is the latest in a mushrooming field of litigation that is beginning to hang over the wireless industry.
In addition to Nokia, the lawsuit names BellSouth Mobility Inc. (now a partner in Cingular Wireless Inc.) and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association as defendants.
The lawsuit, filed last Monday in the Superior Court of Fulton County in Atlanta by 38-year-old Brian Barrett, alleges the wireless industry knew mobile phones “to be defective, unreasonably dangerous and hazardous” and that it was foreseeable the wireless devices would cause injury.
Nokia, CTIA and Cingular declined to comment.
The Barrett lawsuit is the second major mobile-phone-cancer action filed in the last six months against the wireless industry. Last August, 41-year-old Baltimore neurologist Christopher Newman alleged in an $800 million lawsuit against Verizon Wireless, CTIA, Motorola Inc. and others that mobile-phone radiation caused his brain cancer.
Last December, a federal court in Baltimore threw out several counts in the Newman lawsuit, dismissed several defendants and ruled against remanding the case to state court. The judge allowed Newman to file an amended complaint, however.
Last month, Newman’s amended complaint was filed by a new legal team headed by influential Baltimore lawyer Peter Angelos. Angelos, who owns the Baltimore Orioles and is a top Democratic Party donor, has litigated successfully against the asbestos and tobacco industries in personal injury cases.
Angelos and fellow Baltimore attorney Joanne Suder have hinted they may file more mobile-phone-cancer lawsuits this year.
The industry has prevailed in the handful of health lawsuits filed since 1993, when allegations linking mobile phones to brain cancer and other diseases first surfaced. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court recently decided against hearing an appeal of FCC mobile-phone and tower radiation guidelines.
Last month, however, the wireless industry suffered major legal setbacks in health-related cases in Illinois and New Orleans.
A Motorola spokesman confirmed his firm and others are defendants in a mobile-phone-cancer lawsuit in Las Vegas. A spokesman for Mark Hart, a 45-year-old former global sales director for a mobile-phone vendor, last week said a lawsuit will be filed in California in the next 60 days that will allege Hart’s brain cancer was caused by heavy mobile-phone use.
The cellular industry maintains most scientific studies-some funded by Motorola and other wireless firms-fail to link mobile phones to brain cancer.
Yet, the Newman and Barrett lawsuits are replete with published scientific findings that suggest otherwise.
The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is conducting an investigation into the research of bioeffects from mobile-phone radiation. GAO is expected to issue its report in May. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) requested the GAO probe.
“We’re looking toward April and May, getting the GAO report, and when we have it, deciding whether we take any next steps,” said Colin Crowell, a Markey aide.
Markey last year sponsored a bill that would authorize $25 million in federal dollars for wireless health studies.
Other lawmakers also are taking note of new mobile-phone-cancer litigation and grassroots concern about health effects from mobile-phone towers. The Vermont delegation, composed of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. James Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), according to a Jeffords aide, will reintroduce legislation this year to allow local officials to oppose towers for health reasons (an action prohibited by the 1996 telecom act) and to earmark federal funds for wireless health research.
The Barrett lawsuit comes on the heels of a new French government report that urges consumers to take precautions to reduce exposure to mobile phone radiation. The report’s recommendations are similar to a British government report last year. The U.K. report, among other things, said parents should limit use of mobile phones by children.
“Scientific data indicate, with relative certainty, that, during exposure to RF (radio-frequency) from a mobile phone, a variety of biological effects occur at energy levels that do not cause any local increase in temperature. However, in the current state of knowledge of these non-thermal effects, it is not yet possible to determine whether they represent a health hazard,” the French government report stated.
“However,” added the report, “if mobile-phone radio-frequency fields were hazardous, the very high number of mobile phone users could mean that, even if individual risk were very low, the impact on public health could be considerable.”
The Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that oversees radiation-emitting devices, concedes it cannot say for sure whether mobile phones are absolutely safe and that more research is needed.
The FDA is working with the cellular industry to conduct some studies as a follow-up to the six-year, $28 million research program funded by the industry and conducted by epidemiologist Dr. George Carlo, of Wireless Technology Research L.L.C.
The wireless industry has distanced itself from Carlo, who found genetic damage from mobile-phone radiation and who writes in a new book about being intimidated and pressured by a wireless industry that he claims emphasized public relations over science.
“The recommendations we gave industry included post-market surveillance so that cases like this (Barrett) could be catalogued and investigated. It is unfortunate that the only way cases are being discovered is through the legal system. It’s a breach of public trust that the FDA and industry are not leading the effort to identify these types of cases so that the problem can be solved,” said Carlo.
