WASHINGTON—Major mobile-phone carriers and manufacturers have petitioned U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake to reconsider her decision last week to have two health-related lawsuits sent back to state courts in California and Florida and a third lawsuit remanded to a federal court in Louisiana, citing new legal developments prompted by the addition of South Korean giant L.G. Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A. Inc. as a defendant in the litigation.
Industry lawyers, who filed the motion yesterday in federal court in Baltimore, informed Blake that two class-action headset lawsuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania were removed to federal court last Friday.
“LG has removal rights under the Class Action Fairness Act because the litigation… ‘commenced’ after CAFA’s effective date,” wireless industry lawyers said. President Bush signed CAFA—tort reform legislation—into law on Feb. 18, 2005.
The cell-phone industry wants Blake to retain one brain-cancer lawsuit and three class-action suits seeking to force mobile-phone carriers to supply consumers with headsets to minimize radiation from cell phones.
Blake’s court has been the primary venue for cell-phone health litigation in recent years. After her Feb. 15 decision to send back more cases for state courts, it appeared that might be coming to an end. But perhaps not.
Blake rejected an $800 million brain-cancer lawsuit in 2002 and five class-action headset lawsuits in 2003, only to remand six brain-cancer suits to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 2004. In 2005, a divided 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overturned Blake’s headset ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the 4th Circuit’s headset decision.
Blake last year also remanded to the D.C. Superior Court a lawsuit filed by Sarah Dahlgren in which it is alleged mobile-phone companies failed to make consumers aware of possible health risks and the lack of consensus in the scientific community on possible dangers posed by cell phones.
