WASHINGTON-A relatively minor mobile-phone case in Illinois state court-involving allegations of privacy invasion and health risk coverup in connection with an epidemiology study-has mushroomed into one of the largest class-action lawsuits in U.S. history.
Judge Ellis Reid of the Circuit Court of Cook County in Illinois this month approved the notice of the class action, which covers all subscribers who received service from more than 100 cellular telephone companies between Nov. 1, 1993 to Dec. 23, 1998. During that period, the industry signed up at least 40 million additional subscribers.
The notice of the class-action lawsuit is expected to occupy a half page in USA Today next month.
Reid certified the class on July 20 in what sources say has been one of the nastiest and potentially costliest cases confronted by the wireless industry to date.
For example, if the court were to award even nominal relief to each of 40 million subscribers in the class in the form of a $10 check, the cellular industry would have to cough up $400 million.
While it has yet to lose any of the handful of health-related lawsuits brought against it since the early 1990s, when a Florida man alleged his wife’s fatal brain cancer was caused by her cell phone, the wireless industry has suffered a series of legal defeats leading up to the certification of the huge class in July and next month’s publication of it in USA Today.
“We see a challenge to the court’s order before publication,” said Michael Altschul, vice president and general counsel at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. CTIA funded the epidemiology study in question under the auspices of Wireless Technology Research L.L.C.
The wireless industry is especially incensed at the judge for allowing the class to balloon to such an enormous size.
Indeed, while subscribers of more than 100 cellular carriers are contained in the class action, the defendants in the case are limited to Motorola Inc., Ameritech Mobile Communications Inc. (now SBC Wireless Inc.), CTIA, WTR and Epidemiology Resources Inc.
The number of subscribers in ERI’s epidemiology study, which entailed reviewing phone records without subscriber consent, is said to be between 1 and 2 million.
The lead plaintiff in the case, which dates back to 1995, is Jerald Busse.
“We’re still trying to get a better hold on what the judge decided and how it’s going to go forward,” Norman Sandler, a Motorola spokesman. Sandler said the class certified by Judge Reid is not justified.
WTR head George Carlo, who at one time was a defendant before being dismissed because of his role in contracting ERI to conduct the epidemiology study, insists WTR is innocent of any wrongdoing. Carlo said the Federal Communications Commission gave WTR clearance to probe phone records for a study designed to determined whether cell-phone users had a higher rate of cancer compared to others. Carlo said the study, cut short by litigation, suggests there is an association between cell-phone usage and brain cancer. One of the researchers who worked on the project disputes that interpretation.
Representing Busse in the class-action lawsuit is Chicago attorney Ben Barnow, a lead attorney in a multi-state class-action lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. Barnow has successfully litigated against new and old economy companies.
“Although marketed by Motorola and other industry members as being proven safe by over 40 years of research and thousands of studies,” states the original Busse complaint, a significant number of persons within the scientific community have reported that cellular portable telephones have never been proven safe. This fact is well know to each of the defendants and other members of the industry.”
While many studies have failed to link mobile phones to brain cancer and other diseases, recent research has found DNA breaks, genetic damage and increased cancer in rodents exposed to mobile-phone radiation.
New developments in the Busse case come as the wireless faces an $800 million cancer lawsuit in Baltimore (and possibly more by the same lawyer) and a health-related class-action lawsuit in New Orleans.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has before it four petitions seeking to overturn the FCC’s 1996 radiation safety standard for mobile phones and towers.
