- SAN JOSE, Calif (AP)
-- Two former IBM employees who believe their semiconductor factory jobs
exposed them to cancer-causing chemicals can pursue a suit against the
firm, a judge ruled Tuesday. Superior Court Judge Robert Baines said the
cases of Alida Hernandez and James Moore, who worked in IBM's South San
Jose, Calif., microchip assembly plant for much of the 1970s and 1980s,
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. Baines also dismissed two other
cases against IBM on Tuesday.
-
- IBM allegedly lied
-
- Hernandez and Moore allege the Armonk-based technology
giant knowingly exposed workers to cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene
and arsenic, and lied to them about the health risks.
-
- They say IBM doctors knew an alarming number of workers
in its semiconductor factories were dying from rare cancers in their 30s,
40s and 50s.
-
- 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.
-
- They're seeking unspecified damages from IBM and 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,'' said Richard Alexander, lead attorney
for the San Jose workers. ''It's time the truth was heard.''
-
- More than 250 lawsuits
-
- The San Jose case is the first of more than 250 lawsuits
filed against IBM from workers in Silicon Valley, Minnesota and New York,
which includes the East Fishkill microelectronics site.
-
- In 2001, the company settled a lawsuit filed by a teenager
whose parents had worked in the East Fishkill plant in the 1980s.
-
- That suit claimed the boy's severe birth defects and
blindness were caused by processing chemicals used by his parents.
-
- In rulings issued Tuesday, the judge dismissed 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, an attorney representing IBM, called
the dismissals ''deeply gratifying.''
-
- He said the ruling ''essentially guts the entire theory
that all plaintiffs were proceeding by,'' DiMeglio said in a phone interview
from his office in Los Angeles. ''The ruling sets a high legal standard
that the remaining plaintiffs won't be able to meet.''
-
- The judge refused to dismiss cases by Santiago and Rubio's
children against IBM chemical suppliers Shell Oil and Union Carbide. They
will go to trial with Moore and Hernandez's cases.
-
- A ''corporate mortality file'' used to document the deaths
of 30,000 IBM employees from 1969 to 2000, shows an unusually large number
of workers 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 if
exposure to toxins in IBM plants -- and not genetic factors or lifestyle
-- led to early deaths and illnesses.
-
- ''Their claims just don't have the factual or legal support,''
DiMeglio said
|
