Same issue with Rainboe in the cockpit area back in the 70's/80's
Even a much smaller case, far from the headlines, can provoke
Boeing's legal tenacity if manufacturing liability is at issue.
In the late 1980s, Lance Schaeffer, a San Diego attorney,
represented a USAir pilot, Richard O'Harren, in what became a
knock-down, drag-out legal battle with Gerrard and Boeing.
Boeing ultimately paid O'Harren $317,000 in compensatory
damages and legal fees, after a six-year fight, for injuries O'Harren
suffered when he was sprayed in the face by a windshield rain
repellent called RainBoe.
Invented by Boeing in the mid-'60s, RainBoe became standard
equipment on jetliners. It was usually stored in a canister inside the
cabin, within arm's reach of the pilot. Sometimes the canister
leaked.
Boeing to this day contends RainBoe is nontoxic, though 95
percent of it is a solvent, Freon 113, which has been blamed in at
least 12 deaths in industrial settings.
At a 1990 trial, Schaeffer produced substantial evidence that
Freon 113 attacks the human central nervous system, causing
disorientation, motor-skills impairment and sudden heart attack.
Schaeffer also established that there was a pattern of RainBoe
canisters leaking.
Led by Gerrard, Boeing's defense team disputed that RainBoe
was toxic, denied the company was aware of any instances of it
leaking and tried to portray O'Harren as a malingerer, court
documents show. The case swung in O'Harren's favor when the
company finally produced reports, years after Schaeffer first
requested them, indicating one airline had reported 55 RainBoe
leak incidents in a five-year period. There was a service history of
problems, after all.
You think its bad NOW, wait till
Aum_Shinrikyo buys an airline ticket!