Five-Day Hearing on Scientific Evidence
A federal judge will soon decide the future of mobile phone–cancer litigation. Judge Catherine Blake will determine whether there is enough reliable scientific evidence linking cell phones to brain cancer to allow the first of many multimillion-dollar claims to be heard in U.S. courts.
Judge Blake’s decision will likely turn on a single unpublished epidemiological study by Sweden’s Dr. Lennart Hardell. An oncologist at Örebro Medical Center, Hardell has reported that using an analog phone increases the risk of developing brain cancer.
Dr. Christopher Newman, a 42-year-old Baltimore neurologist, blames Motorola and a number of other cell phone companies for his malignant brain tumor (see MWN,S/O00). At a weeklong hearing in Baltimore, attorneys from Peter Angelos’s law office presented Hardell and four other experts in support of Newman’s complaint. Defense lawyers, in turn, presented their own witnesses to refute the plaintiff's arguments.
During that same week in late February, five new brain tumor suits were filed in a Washington, DC, court.
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