Personal Injury Law

Paul Lees-Haley Paid $860,000 By Welding Defendants

By Bruce Stern

The Center for Public Integrity has just released a shocking story disclosing that Paul Lees-Haley, Ph.D. and other researchers were paid millions of dollars by the welding industry which has been  embattled in litigation over whether welding fumes contain manganese, a toxic metal that specialists suggest cause Parkinsonism.
 
According to the story, lawsuits against the welding industry have been ongoing since the 1970s.  The welding products industry has consistently argued that there were no reliable scientific data to prove that welding fumes cause the Parkinson-like syndrome known as Parkinsonism.
 
Recently, in December, U.S. District Judge Kathleen O’Malley, who has been handling hundreds of these cases, ordered both sides to fully disclose payments made by any of the parties to researchers.  Court documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity demonstrate that “The welding companies paid more than $12.5 million to 25 organizations and 33 researchers, virtually all of whom have published papers dismissing the connection between welding fumes and workers’ ailments.  Most of the money, $11 million,  was spent after the litigation achieved critical mass in 2003; attorneys for the welders, meanwhile, spent about half a million.”
 
The documents revealed that Jon Fryzek who works for Maryland’s International Epidemiology Institute - “known for its industry-commissioned studies” was paid $971,000 from welding defendants.
 
The defendants also paid $860,000 to Paul Lees-Haley, while C. Warren Olanow, M.D., a Manhattan neurologist who has  “published at least a dozen articles cited by defense experts” received almost $2.9 million.  The Parkinson Institute in California received nearly $3.4 million  to conduct a four-year study.  
 
The revelations about Dr. Paul Lees-Haley strongly confirm the opinions published by Erin Bigler, Ph.D., an internationally-renowned neuropsychologist who recently published an article entitled “Motion to Exclude” in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, where Dr. Bigler criticized defense forensic neuropsychologists.
 
The story published by the Center for Public Integrity can be found on their website and is also being published concurrently in Mother Jones magazine.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on July 31, 2008 (boomark / email).