SAN FRANCISCO — Facing trial in two lawsuits by cancer-stricken former employees, IBM will ask a California judge Tuesday to bar a jury from hearing evidence central to their claims of chemical poisoning: a study of 30,000 IBM worker deaths pointing to a higher-than-normal incidence of cancer.
Known as the Corporate Mortality File, the collection of records maintained by International Business Machines over 30 years shows an “alarming” proportion of cancer deaths at the company, according to Dr. Richard Clapp, a Boston University cancer researcher hired by the workers.
IBM calls Clapp’s analysis “junk science,” and says the Corporate Mortality File is an incomplete and error-prone benefits record. A jury might be confused by the conclusions of the analysis, which does not link cancer deaths to any chemical, the company said.
IBM also asked Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Robert Baines to exclude the death file on the grounds that Clapp violated confidentiality orders by speaking to a New York Times columnist who wrote about the IBM workers in September.
“Jurors will very likely give undue weight to any statistical calculation said to represent the risk or rate of dying from cancer among IBM employees, no matter how spurious, unscientific, flawed or irrelevant the underlying data or analysis … or how speculative the expert opinions about this data.” IBM lawyers said in a filing.
More than 200 worker health cases are pending against IBM in three states. The cases of Alida Hernandez and James Moore, the farthest along in the courts, are set for jury selection on October 14 in a state superior court in San Jose. Last week, Judge Baines threw out two other cases against IBM because of contradictions in testimony.
Lawyers for the workers say the analysis was valid and that no confidentiality orders were broken. They also argue that the higher proportion of cancer deaths must have tipped off IBM that something was gravely wrong in its factories, and that a jury deserves to hear that argument.
Hernandez, who started at IBM in 1977, worked with chemicals in a San Jose disk-drive plant to clean coatings off tools and machinery. She complained to IBM of headaches and blackouts, as well as skin and eye ailments, and developed breast cancer in 1993, two years after she left the company.
Moore, in 27 years at IBM, also complained of headaches as well as profuse nasal discharge while working with chemicals like sulfuric acid and trichloroethylene. He developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1995.
A scientist hired by IBM argues that the type of proportional death analysis used by Clapp tends to overstate the incidence of cancer.
Jack Mandel, the chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said workers are generally healthier than the general public, since they must be well enough to hold a job and be productive.
Death from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other illnesses tend to be lower, leading to a higher proportion of cancer deaths than the general public, he said in a declaration to the court.
