The federal judge who is over-seeing the national suit over welding fume products liability has affirmed the medical screenings that were performed on plaintiffs and rejected a motion from the defendants in the suit that would have dismissed thousands of lawsuits pending in the case.

On April 5th, Judge Kathleen O'Malley, the federal judge overseeing the national Welding Fume Products Liability Multidistrict Litigation, issued a written order that denied the defendants' request to dismiss thousands of lawsuits against a number of manufacturers of welding consumables and equipment (In re Welding Fume Products Liability Litigation, Multidistrict Litigation Docket No. 1535, United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio). Companies such as Lincoln Electric Company, General Electric Company, Caterpillar Inc. and others are named as defendants in the suit.

"Try as defendants might to characterize it as such, this multidistrict litigation is not similar to the Silica multidistrict litigation; and this Court will not treat it as if it were," Judge O'Malley said in her ruling, referring to the defendants' attempt to compare the litigation with findings of medical fraud in an unrelated group of Texas-based silica lawsuits.

The judge also endorsed the plaintiffs' medical screenings and defended those screenings from public attacks made by defense lawyers.

"[U]nlike in the Silica case, the screening process used by plaintiffs' counsel in this case to 'weed out' persons who do not have a valid basis for claiming an injury caused by the toxin in question was robust," the judge said. The "toxin in question" in the welding fume litigation is manganese, which is commonly found in welding rods.

The judge also defended Dr. Paul Nausieda, a leading neurologist and one of the welding plaintiffs' chief medical experts, whose character was questioned by the welding industry's lawyers. The judge explained that many other neurologists, including doctors uninvolved with the welding rod litigation, "have concluded that welding fumes caused or contributed to an individual's neurological disorder."

Judge O'Malley went on to deny the defendants' request to dismiss all plaintiffs diagnosed with a neurological disorder by Dr. Nausieda, calling this request "untenable and unjustified."

She also denied the defendants' motion to sanction the plaintiffs for the much-publicized dismissals of cases filed by welders Scott Landry and Dewey Morgan.

Landry and Morgan were picked by the plaintiffs' lawyers as the welders whose conditions best represented injuries allegedly sustained from welding. However, both Landry's and Morgan's cases were withdrawn by their lawyers and were formally dismissed March 10 after evidence presented in court showed that their lives apparently were unaffected by the injuries they claimed in court.