| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) Two former IBM employees who believe their semiconductor factory jobs exposed them to cancer-causing chemicals will be able to proceed with their potentially groundbreaking lawsuits against the technology giant.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Robert Baines ruled Tuesday that the cases of Alida Hernandez and James Moore, who worked in IBM's South San Jose microchip assembly plant for much of the 1970s and '80s, could proceed to a jury trial starting Oct. 14.
IBM contended in court last week that Hernandez and Moore's cases had no merit and should not be heard.
Hernandez and Moore allege that the Armonk, N.Y.-based corporate behemoth intentionally exposed workers to cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene and arsenic, and lied to them about the health risks. They say IBM doctors knew that an alarming number of workers in its semiconductor ``fabs'' were dying from rare cancers in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages against IBM and its chemical suppliers, including Union Carbide, Shell Oil and Fisher Scientific.
``We've been fighting to get IBM in court for five years, so we're looking forward to the trial,'' Richard Alexander, leader of a six-person team representing the San Jose workers, said Friday. ``It's time the truth was heard.''
Moore and Hernandez's cases, filed in 1998, were the first of more than 250 lawsuits filed against IBM from workers in Silicon Valley, New York and Minnesota. It's unclear how many plaintiffs will proceed to jury trials.
In a series of written rulings issued Tuesday, Baines dismissed two other cases against IBM by former employee Maria Santiago and the children of Suzanne Rubio, an IBM disk assembler and inspector who died of breast cancer at age 37.
David J. DiMeglio, a lawyer representing IBM, said the dismissals were ``deeply gratifying.''
``Today's ruling, which dismisses outright two of the four plaintiffs' cases, essentially guts the entire theory that all plaintiffs were proceeding by,'' DiMeglio said. ``The ruling sets a high legal standard that the remaining plaintiffs won't be able to meet.''
Baines refused to dismiss cases by Santiago and Rubio's children against IBM chemical suppliers Shell and Union Carbide. They will go to trial with Moore and Hernandez's cases, and closing arguments are expected by the end of the year.
The IBM lawsuit has fixated scientists who have long debated the existence of ``disease clusters.'' Movies such as ``Erin Brockovich'' and ``A Civil Action'' have expanded an esoteric debate among epidemiologists and statisticians into a heated public health issue.
Because of the threat of negative publicity and heart-wrenching anecdotes, the vast majority of environmental exposure cases against big companies are settled out of court, sometimes for hundreds of millions of dollars.
IBM settled a lawsuit in 2001 by two former employees who alleged that exposure to chemicals caused birth defects in their son. IBM suppliers Ashland Chemical Co., Eastman Kodak Co. and DuPont Corp. all named in the San Jose case reached tentative settlements with more than 250 plaintiffs.
But Big Blue has refused to settle the San Jose cases, despite the fact that it has made public hundreds of court documents detailing human misery and allegations of corporate secrecy.
According to a ``corporate mortality file'' used to document the deaths of 30,000 IBM employees from 1969 to 2000, an unusually large number of workers were struck with relatively rare forms of cancer in their 30s, 40s and 50s. They often contracted lymph, blood, breast and brain cancers, as well as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia and the very rare multiple myeloma.
IBM and its attorneys say it's impossible to know whether exposure to toxins in IBM plants as opposed to genetic factors or lifestyle decisions such as smoking or drug use lead to early deaths and illnesses. They argue that company doctors could not possibly have known that sore throats, bloody noses, conjunctivitis, elevated liver enzyme counts and other ailments were precursors of cancer or symptoms of ``systemic chemical poisoning.''
``We look forward to defending the remaining cases before a jury,'' DiMeglio said. ``Their claims just don't have the factual or legal support. ... There is no evidence, and they're not going to produce any, that IBM ever knew that Mr. Hernandez or Mr. Moore had systemic chemical poisoning.''
Hernandez was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy two years after retiring from IBM, despite having no family history of the disease. Moore, who began working for IBM in the late 1960s, is battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Alexander said both will testify during the hearing.
``We're going to let the jury hear real people explain what it was like working there on a daily basis, getting dosed with chemicals all the time,'' Alexander said. ``It's outrageous people were treated this way.''