Airport Hit With Mold Class Action

DIA spokesperson Chuck Tannen refused to comment, noting that the airport's attorneys advised against discussing the case because it is in litigation.

Mr. Childress told National Underwriter that his clients are suffering from a spectrum of injuries relating to mold exposure, including nasal bleeding, skin rashes and chronic fatigue. "It is like having a cold every day for two years," he said. "Before they started working at the airport, they were fine."

People have been getting sick from mold at this airport for years, Mr. Childress noted. "The biggest problems were in the boxed-in areas such as the red-carpet rooms where the premier customers gathered. There were also training facilities in the basement of the airport where people were getting sick."

"The airport has had water problems from sewer back-up and poor drainage," Mr. Childress continued. "There were also problems with removing waste water and with the plane de-icer that contributed to the growth of mold."

Seth Norman, CEO of Walled Lake, Mich.-based remediation firm Mold Free, noted that it is possible for mold, even in an area as large as an airport, to cause respiratory problems.

"People call us every day with a variety of ailments related to mold," Mr. Norman said. "For example, a produce clerk at a supermarket said that he developed emphysema due to mold. Another client became sick from mold in exposed ceiling tiles," he added.

Even travelers passing through an airport, if they are exposed to organisms producing microtoxins, and depending on their immune systems, can be adversely affected, he said. "And if they have allergies, even if they quickly leave the site, there can be a reaction."

Whether class action status would be granted by a court is a separate issue, and one that is more in doubt than the merits of the plaintiffs' medical claims, according to Charles Gfeller, an insurance defense attorney with Edwards & Angell LLP in Hartford, Conn. Mr. Gfeller is not involved in the DIA case.

"It's tough to get a class action certified in a mold case," said Mr. Gfeller. "There has to be commonality, which means scenarios where you have people with the same type of exposure. This case sounds like it was varying exposures at varying times."

Even for those who worked at the airport, it would be unlikely that a court would certify a class action, Mr. Gfeller continued. "The amount and degree of exposure, the types of injuries, and the area of the airport where they worked would be different," he said.

But Mr. Childress asserted that the injuries and other circumstances have enough in common to justify class action status. "We are alleging a common cause of injury, common water damage events, and common areas that people were working in and occupying," he pointed out. "The law says you need some commonality to have class status, but does not say that the class has to have everything in common," he added.

Mr. Childress also indicated that class notification would be difficult, but not impossible. "Names and addresses of employees and travelers can be obtained from airline records," he noted. "For others, notice can be given through the newspapers."

This is probably not the last time a large public facility will face a mold-related class action, he predicted. "Public entities tend to have budget problems, so they often perform cosmetic maintenance, such as painting. But they dont have enough money to replace the roof."

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, July 21, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.