A lawsuit over the effects of welding fumes and whether they can cause Parkinsonism opened in federal district court in Cleveland June 6. The suit is being heard in front of a jury, and it is the first of about 3,800 pending lawsuits that were consolidated in the Cleveland federal court. Lawyers for both sides are waiting to see how this jury trial turns out.

Lawyers for Ernesto G. Solis, a 57-year-old man from Corpus Christi, Texas, said Solis was not provided with adequate warnings about the potential for health hazards that could arise from breathing welding fumes.

Solis was a principal welder at the U.S. naval air station in Corpus Christi from 1982 through 1989, and has been a welding supervisor at the naval air station since 1989. The suit contends that he was exposed to toxic manganese fumes from welding from 1973, when he started his welding career, through 2001.

Scott Bickford, Solis’s lawyer, said his client was not given sufficient warnings about manganese fumes that arise from welding processes, and that years of exposure to welding fumes took a serious toll on his health that resulted in a hand tremor. The suit alleges that manganese can damage the human nervous system and limit a person’s ability to think, talk and move, resulting in "manganism," a chronic illness that has symptoms similar to Parkinson’s Disease.

Defendants in the suit are Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc., Hobart Brothers Co., TDY Industries Inc. and the ESAB Group.

Richard Sarver, lead lawyer for the companies, told the jury the suit is not about whether the products their clients produce are good or bad.

"This case is about what plaintiffs say they want warning labels to be, not about whether the product is effective or good.

"This is about a lawyer putting into a newspaper a notice inviting welders to come to a local hotel for a (medical) screening," Sarver said in his opening statement.

Bickford told the jury that Solis found out about the symptoms of manganism and how it could relate to welding in an advertisement in a Houston newspaper that he saw, and Sarver said Solis answered that ad and was given a medical screening that took only six minutes to determine that he had symptoms of the Parkinsonism.

"Whatever ails Mr. Solis, it has nothing to do with manganese or with welding," Sarver said, noting that in more than 65 visits to doctors Solis did not say he had tremors in his hand, and that nothing abnormal was found in either a magnetic resonance imaging scan that Solis had or in a more extensive scan for chemicals in his brain. Solis’s own lawyers requested that he have the brain chemical scan.

Sarver implied to the jury that Solis tended to have a psychological proclivity to have illnesses. "Solis has psychogenic physiological disorder, there is nothing wrong with his brain," Sarver said.

The suit was expected to be argued before the jury over a period of three weeks, as numerous expert witnesses testify for both sides.