Science News Service©™
April 1, 2016 7:21 AM UTC
Geneva, Switzerland
Class Action Lawsuit Against Manufacturers Using Leaded Solder
Headed for U.S. Supreme Court
Lyon Legal Justice Partners, a not for non-profit
legal foundation based in Hill Valley, California, has announced in the wake of
a crushing and unexpected loss before the United States 9th Circuit Court of appeals
against manufacturers using leaded solder in their products, that its legal team
will appeal the unprecedented 12.4 billion dollars awarded to class action members
from its client companies that comprise the International Brotherhood of Electronics
Assemblers. Plaintiffs originally sought 5 billion dollars as recompense for pain,
suffering, lost wages, and lost opportunity by its class of more than 25,000 electronics
manufacturing workers worldwide. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge M.R. Strickland;
however, after finding defense counsel in contempt on multiple occasions during
the trial, added to the award to spite "the slacker," in his words. The United States
Supreme Court is the next and final venue for relief or better, as anticipated by
Lyon Legal Justice Partners spokesman Britt Tannen, a full dismissal of the lawsuit.
His defense appeal strategy includes a countersuit of individual class action signators.
"Our hope is that a victory with the Supremes will cause a chilling effect amongst
anybody contemplating similar action in the future." IBEA lead attorney Jennifer
Parker declined to issue a formal statement.
Research shows that the class action lawsuit was initiated as the result of epidemic
proportions of current and former solder station workers falling ill from improperly
vented flux smoke and from not being provided protective hand coverings for preventing
the transfer of lead content from the solder wire to bare skin, with its subsequent
absorption through the skin. Up until the early 2000s, prior to widespread adoption
of lead-free solder products, the majority of soldering operations were preformed
with solder alloy that contained typically 30-60% lead, the remaining metal being
tin, indium, silver, and other trace elements. Workers commonly spent entire eight
hour shifts hunched over workbenches, soldering iron in hand, assembling printed
circuit boards often with face and nose within a few inches of where hot solder
flux wafted from the work point. Those who manned wave soldering machines were exposed
extensively to large, open vats of molten solder and flux. Severe skins burns have
been reported but thousands of workers, and hundreds of others have incurred damaged
or loss of eyesight due to solder splashes.
As with the well-publicized asbestos exposure health repercussions and the heart-breaking
long-term issues associated with it, lawyers in countries where large scale electronics
manufacturing operations have been in existence for decades are meeting in war rooms
to strategize a means of elevating the relatively newfound soldering station operator
maladies to a public awareness level that will equal or exceed that of the asbestos
crisis. Partial or total loss of a sense of smell from deterioration of nasal cavity
issue, swallowing difficulty from mucus membrane atrophy, and acute pulmonary dysfunction
due to bronchioles and alveolar-capillary cell death are attributed primarily to
solder flux inhalation. Loss of feeling in fingers and hands that endured long-term
contact with the leaded solder and, most devastatingly, brain damage from lead absorption
have been diagnosed as being caused directly by lead exposure. Doctors and scientists
have been and are continuing to collect statistical evidence that purports to directly
link both solder flux and lead content to claimants' collective maladies. Dr. E.
Brown, an expert in the field of heavy metal toxicology, and employee abuse specialist
George McFleigh are confident that this latest win by International Brotherhood
of Electronics Assemblers is just the tip of an iceberg looming below the surface
of an ocean of litigation.
Electronics manufacturing companies are understandably in full damage control
mode and are just now waking up to the potential for the financially disastrous
implications if the world's public adopts this issue of "abuse" as it did with asbestos.
No statute of limitations exists that would prevent former solderers from as far
back as even the World War II era from initiating or joining existing class
action lawsuits against companies that employed them. Asbestos settlements, operating
under the joint and several liability concept of law, have successfully sued corporations
that acquired companies which were responsible for the employee abuses; no limit
exists for the line of provenance to ownership. If litigants are able to convince
judges and juries that the hazards of human exposure - both short term and long
term - to leaded solder and its accompanying flux either were know about or reasonably
should have been known about, then "the sky's the limit" in how much restitution
money can be collected from the electronics industry. One unnamed source from a
major electronics manufacturer hinted that the impetus for creating the entire lead-free
(Pb-Free) movement two decades ago was an attempt to eliminate or at lease minimize
the level of damage that now seems to be inevitable.
Efforts are in the works to begin a media awareness campaign and funds are being
allocated for a massive newspaper and magazine buy for soliciting class action co-defendants.
Unlike the asbestos movement, the presence of the Internet will assure that teams
of lawyers who believe they have just struck the mother lode of the next big thing
in class action lawsuits will reach across the entire Earth in record time. YouTube
videos will undoubtedly go viral with testimonies of victims of leaded solder related
handicaps and images of suffering by them and their families. Hashtags such as #SaveOurSolderers
and #JusticeForSolderers are already trending on Twitter. Social media will help
ensure success.
If you or anybody you know is now or has once worked at a job performing soldering
operations using solder products with lead content, you might want to search for
a group like Lyon Legal Justice Partners to represent you or your acquaintance.
If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court's ruling, this could be a real setback
to the future of electronics manufacturing.
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Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.
Written by Kirt Blattenberger
for April Fool's Day, 2016. A search of Science News Services, Lyon Legal Justice
Partners, and International Brotherhood of Electronics Assemblers turned up no for-real
entities by those names.
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Posted April 1, 2016
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