By Michael Santarini, EE Times
December 3, 2003 (11:29 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20031202S0037
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Four former IBM employees testified to common use of chemicals and one IBM doctor had his deposition read to the jury as the IBM chemical trial stretched into its 5th week.
Thus far this week, plaintiffs have called witnesses to back previous testimony that workers at IBM's San Jose Cottle Road facility commonly used and were exposed to chemicals.
The two plaintiffs in the case, Alida Hernandez and Jim Moore, allege that IBM negligently exposed them to harmful chemicals, which made them ill and that IBM then knowingly concealed their sicknesses from them. The plaintiffs contend that the illnesses later caused cancer in both.
On Monday, December 1, plaintiffs called two former IBM employees Gregory Sisk, 46, and Chris Ramm, 41, to testify about working conditions and the chemicals they both used while working at IBM's San Jose Cottle Road manufacturing facility producing disks for hard disk drives.
Sisk, who worked from 1984-1994 in IBM's San Jose plant, and Ramm, who worked in the same plant from 1981-2000, in brief testimony each described for the jury that they used chemicals daily while working in hard disk manufacturing. Each also testified that they too have similar cases pending against IBM: Both contracted testicular cancer.
Sisk testified that he used freon, isopropyl alcohol (IPA), kerosene, IPA mixed with water and a proprietary chemical concoction he called "IBM fluid 12" between 1984 and 1992, working in lube, cure bake, buff and disk wash in the Cottle Road Building 4 hard disk manufacturing.
Sisk testified that while he wore a smock and rubber gloves frequently at IBM, the chemicals he used to clean disk-manufacturing machinery would often run down his gloves and soak his wrists and forearms.
On cross-examination, Sisk however testified that he did not know or work in the same buildings as either Moore or Hernandez.Similarly, Ramm, who primarily worked in the buff and wash in disk manufacturing, testified that he occasionally helped disk coater operators clean disk coating machines. Much like Hernandez' testimony at the beginning of the trial, Ramm, said that when cleaning excess disk coating material from disk coating machines with acetone applied to sponges, the acetone and coating material would soak through his clothes and stain his skin.
Plaintiffs contend that the mixture of acetone and coating materials soaking through Hernandez cloths to her skin was a major factor that eventually led to her contracting breast cancer in 1993.
Today (Tuesday, Dec.2) plaintiffs attempted to add that Hernandez was also exposed to harmful chemical fumes in working as a coater. Plaintiffs called a former IBM mechanical engineer Bill Sprague to testify to the layout of hard disk coating booths and the ventilation system involved in disk coating clean rooms.
Sprague, who worked as a manufacturing engineer at the Cottle Road plant maintaining disk coating machines from 1977-1999, when he was laid off by IBM, drew diagrams of a coating booth and described for the jury how one of many ducts of the ventilation system for coating machines would often get clogged with coating material.
Sprague described how the ventilation system outside the booths would feed air through HEPA filters in the ceiling and the air would be captured in a sub floor air ducts and recirculated. He testified that the coating booths themselves had similar HEPA filter systems with the addition of another large ventilation system to the rear of the coating machines and three very small ventilation ducts in the machine itself. While all other ducts were in place to reduce dust contaminants, the three small ventilation ducts were used to keep chemical fumes away from workers, testified Sprague.
But Sprague testified these three ducts embedded in the machine would commonly get clogged and not meet minimum specification for airflow.
Sprague, on cross examination by IBM attorneys, testified that IBM process engineers would clean the ducts periodically and would replace ducts when they were found not to be working properly. He also testified that he wasn't sure if the ducts were inspected monthly, quarterly or once every year.
Sprague also admitted that he was not a clean room designer.
Sprague earlier in the day testified that at IBM he was given the task of completing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report on chemicals used in the coating operation. Reading from one such report, he testified that Acetone was used to clean coating material and that Xylene, Phenolic resin 108, epoxy and polyvinylmethylether were used in the coating materials. He testified that would often get coating material on him when inspecting coating machines and commonly saw coating stains on coating operators. "It was a pretty dirty operation," testified Sprague.
With the jury out of the courtroom, IBM attorneys also successfully argued to preempt a former IBM manager Beth Deisner-Gee from testifying for the plaintiffs. Plaintiff's attorney, Richard Alexander, argued to Judge Baines that Deisner-Gee, attended manager training at IBM's headquarters in the early 1980s in Armonk in which she was was told by IBM managers and a head IBM doctor to tell workers complaining of chemical illness that "there has never been a proven case within IBM that the work environment causes cancer."
Alexander argued that Deisner-Gees testimony would show that it was an IBM corporate policy not just a Cottle Road policy to conceal chemical related illnesses from employees.
Judge Baines however sided with IBM attorneys in barring her testimony because Deisner-Gee was not a manager of medical staff and none of the plaintiff's witnesses formerly of IBM's medical staff thus far have testified that they were directed to say such things to employees at manager training in Armonk.
Plaintiff's attorney's also read an uncontested deposition from a former Cottle Road IBM medical doctor Edward Coats, who treated Hernandez for high liver enzyme counts in the mid 1980's. With plaintiffs attorney Amanda Hawes reading deposition questions and Alexander reading Coats' reply to the Feb. 2003 deposition.
Coats in the deposition explained how he had no specific recollection Hernandez, but viewing documents from the time he treated Hernandez, testified that he commonly provided documents to an employee's MD describing the chemicals they worked with.
In his deposition he also testified that he did not conceal possible chemical-caused illnesses from employee patients.
