In a resounding victory for defendants in a groundwater contamination case, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled Monday there is no proof that a solvent found in the water caused health problems of nearby residents.
The ruling ends, at least at the Superior Court level, part of Lofgren vs. Motorola related to 18 east Phoenix and Scottsdale residents. They argued that their illnesses, and in some cases deaths, were linked to exposure to trichloroethylene, or TCE.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they are confident in their case and will appeal. Several plaintiffs declined to comment Monday.
The defendants include Motorola and Phoenix.
The ruling could have a far-reaching impact on other related cases of TCE contamination, including a pending portion of Lofgren plaintiffs in west Phoenix.
In Lofgren, residents alleged exposure to the TCE caused leukemia, brain tumors, kidney disease, congenital heart defects and Hodgkin's disease.
But Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Steven Sheldon granted summary judgment in favor of the defense, essentially dismissing the case.
The residents' exposure to TCE was "almost impossible to determine with certainty," Sheldon wrote in his 65-page ruling.
The plaintiffs had offered medical and scientific testimony trying to show that the TCE found in the groundwater and the air caused the diseases.
But Sheldon was not swayed. He said it appears that none of the plaintiffs' experts "considered the actual exposures that any of the individual plaintiffs incurred." The experts instead tried to show how much exposure the residents may have experienced.
Sheldon repeatedly questioned the plaintiffs' expert testimony in pretrial proceedings. One of the experts, when asked if a resident would not have developed a brain tumor if not for the TCE exposure, replied, "I simply don't know."
Another expert was asked if it was likely that, but for their exposure to TCE, two plaintiffs would not have developed diseases. His response: "I can't answer your question."
The plaintiffs' experts "simply could not, and probably were not willing on the state of the scientific knowledge at this time," to say that the residents would not have become ill except for the TCE exposure, the judge found.
But Sheldon wrote that he was impressed with the credentials and credibility of the defense experts.
The defense case was based on the contention that the TCE was in quantities too small to damage the residents' health.
Tony Lucia, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the decision will be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during the next 30 days. He said his clients declined to comment on the judgment.
"We are confident that there was substantial evidence to support our experts' opinions," he said. "We think we'll win on appeal and then we will come back on our jury trial."
If the judge's ruling stands, it would kill a class-action lawsuit asking for medical monitoring of hundreds of thousands of residents who have been exposed to TCE.
And, although a state court ruling does not set precedence, it could have far reaching effects to dozens of TCE-related lawsuits filed statewide.
Phoenix Deputy City Manager David Garcia said Monday's ruling could weaken the case of west-side Phoenix residents, whose portion of the case is pending.
"A lot of the issues are the same, a lot of the expert testimony is the same," Garcia said.
Phil Haggerty, the chief assistant city attorney, said the ruling "will have a substantial impact on the west-side case to the extent that the evidence is substantially identical."
The city was targeted in the lawsuit for passing along contaminated water through the public drinking water system.
A key to Sheldon's decision was the credibility of the defendants' expert witnesses in the case, which he called "indisputable" among the world's best.
One was a doctor who is editor of the leading text on rheumatology, received his medical degree with honors from Yale University School of Medicine and did post-graduate training in internal medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also worked as an epidemiologist with what is now the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Republic reporter Alexa Haussler contributed to this article.
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