IBM starts fighting cancer blame case

Court arguments in the landmark toxic-chemical case against IBM opened in California yesterday, as an attorney for two former employees claimed the computer giant knew of symptoms of ongoing chemical poisoning among workers.

In a courtroom dotted with onlookers wearing black armbands emblazoned with the names of deceased family members and friends, attorney Richard Alexander opened with a mini-chemistry lesson for jury members. He said experts will testify that the chemicals used on a daily basis by former employees James Moore and Alida Hernandez in IBM's San Jose facility contributed to their later cancers.

"Because IBM said nothing when it had the duty to speak up, these poor people continued to work," Alexander told the jury. "They were never given a chance to preserve their most valuable asset: their health."

The case, which is expected to last for up to several months, is the first of 250 similar cases to go to court. The cases, spread across the US, seek to hold IBM responsible for a wide variety of cancers and other maladies that plaintiffs say were caused by working in hard-drive and semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

IBM, like other manufacturers, has long said that it has taken every precaution against exposing its employees to dangerous levels of toxins.

Bob Weber, a Jones Day attorney representing IBM, said in his opening statement: "The evidence will not show that the people of IBM created a toxic atmosphere in which [employees] managed and worked. You won't see fraud, because it didn't happen."

Analysts said the case could trigger an avalanche of similar suits against other manufacturing companies if plaintiffs win a verdict against IBM.

But legal experts said that could be difficult. Lawyers for the plaintiffs must prove not only that the chemicals used by the company in its manufacturing process could have contributed to these former employees' cancers, but that IBM knew of the specific dangers and did not take adequate precautionary measures.

Already, the judge in the case has ruled one IBM database on employee mortality rates inadmissible as evidence. The company had argued that the mortality database contained only death certificate information, with no data on what kind of jobs deceased employees had held, or what kind of chemicals they were exposed to.

Alexander quoted IBM medical clinic records for both Moore and Hernandez that he said showed evidence of long-term chemical poisoning, comparing their symptoms to those included in IBM's own chemical-use handbooks.

He also cited the existence of a different IBM database, created in the early 1980s, which was designed to track a wide variety of employee information, including job history, chronic diseases, what types of substances they had worked with and mortality data. That database system should prove the company was aware of the effects of chemical exposure on its workers, Alexander said.

But IBM spokesman Bill O'Leary said that database project had proved too ambitious in terms of data collection and had been discontinued after a test implementation.

John Borland writes for News.com