Douglas A. Grose, Vice President, Manufacturing & Operations, sent out an email to the employees around IBM MicroElectonics announcing that "IBM has settled pending litigation brought by a former employee and her child, who allege that the child's (serious) birth defects were the result of his parents having been exposed to various chemicals during their work in IBM manufacturing facilities." This occurred after having lost a last-ditch maneuver to block the lawsuit, where IBM would not be allowed to claim that his father and mother knowingly exposed themselves to toxins while assembling semiconductors in a hermetically sealed ''clean room,'' when in fact, IBM provides information about all the chemicals on its computer systems and tells its employees how to access the database, as required by law, but doesn't generally warn its employees about such risks:

According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, the affected child is "15-year-old Zachary David Ruffing, who now lives in Lexington, Ky., was born blind in 1985 with deformities to his facial bones that were so severe they have prevented him from breathing through the mouth and nose, Phillips said. His divorced parents, Michael Ruffing and Faye Calton, who had both worked in a clean room at the Dutchess County plant during the early to mid-1980s, are hoping to recover $40 million in economic damages alone."

The trial was to start in February of 2001 and was to be a landmark case for the U.S. semiconductor industry. It would have also been a bellwether for more than 100 other personal injury suits brought in other courts against IBM and chemical makers. Mr. Gross informed IBM employees "IBM's decision to settle this case was based on the best long-term interests of IBM, its employees and the litigants." IBM appears to be suffering from Clintonitis^*: "IBM feels the Ruffling's pain." The plaintiffs allege exposure to toxic fumes from chemicals known as ethylene glycol ethers caused cases of malignant cancers among them and severe deformities in some 60 offspring born between the late '70s and early '90s. According to Steve Phillips, the birth deformities are "not relatively mild defects, like someone with a sixth finger or a cleft palate," but "blood-curdling malformations, the most horrific kinds of birth defects you can imagine."

IBM is denying that "the settlement is in any way an admission by IBM of any liability," as doing so could be used against IBM in the court of law. "IBM maintains that this is not a confirmation that any scientific link has been established between the child's rare condition and IBM's manufacturing facilities, the chemicals used in IBM manufacturing operations or the use of those chemicals by IBM or its employees," as doing so could be used against IBM in the court of law. "IBM will continue to vigorously defend itself against similar claims brought by other litigants."

Some IBM employees believe this is IBM's way of minimizing the legal obligations toward employees adversely affected by chemicals and radiation that occurred during the manufacturing of computer chips during the past few decades. In fact IBM appears to be using legal and preventative means to avoid astronomical legal costs.

Research conducted at John Hopkins University found that the resist used in the clean room adversely affected people's health, could cause health problems, birth defects and even sterilize the women. IBM immediately notified the employees and started cleaning up many of the problems around the plant. Until that revelation there was little or no attempt to control what fumes employees breathed, unless the fumes were known to be deadly. Building 973 was a large building with open resist applying tools, open wet decks, etc. (A wet deck is a large tool with sinks of boiling acids and DeIonized water, where employees would dip a boat of wafers into the tanks.) It was common to see areas where liquids (like resist) would get onto the floor and dry there:

After lawsuits and the research started appearing, IBM gutted its building 973 fab and upgraded the building with new 200-wafer millimeter tools that exhaust out most fumes, even questionable fumes. Now instead of recycling most of the air, IBM is allowing more fresh air into the fab. Wet decks still use hot and cold acids, but they are now enclosed and ventilated. Robots place the boats of wafers in the tanks and dryer. Photo resist is applied in an FSI and DNS apply tool, which will not run unless it is totally enclosed with ventilators running:

After the pollution started surfacing around the plant in Essex Junction, IBM Burlington started spending money on clean up as well. The same chemicals that affect people were finding their way into the ground, waterways, a small swamp, and a dammed river near the plant. Any new exhaust pipes are now equipped with scrubbers to eliminated most of the contaminants before they can get into the atmosphere. IBM has been digging up contaminated soil and shipping it away to be processed. A small swamp, where animals were dying was fenced off. In fact, IBM was awarded the 2000 Vermont Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence in Pollution Prevention in the large business category for its process of cleaning up the environment. As IBM continued to clean up its act, Vermont continued to offer IBM awards for doing so:

But, IBM still has one problem left over. What do they do with the people have already affected and want to be compensated for the adverse affects they are feeling from breathing all the chemicals back when no one knew the dangers of breathing those chemicals. Back when IBM offered full medical and dental coverage as well as two-thirds of your current salary for the rest of your life for when something happened on the job that prevented you from working for an extended period of time (or even the rest of your life), workers simply continued to collect a check from IBM and stayed quiet. IBM would simply quietly fix the problem and pay off the affected employee:

Under Lou Gerstner, IBM is singing a new tune. Actually it's an old tune, but IBM employees are so spoiled with the old IBM philosophy, IBM employees are having a hard time getting used to it. IBM management no longer spends much time asking, "what can we do for our employees?" Lou wanted IBM to be like every other big business in every way. Like every other company, IBM employees started forming unions and suing IBM for any injustice or perceived injustice. Lou got what he wanted.

IBM is now trying to wiggle out of (or at least, minimize) the legal costs that are occurring from the employees who are seeking compensation for the health problems they are encountering while working for IBM. Employees are trying to force IBM to cover medical costs associated with working for IBM, and they are no longer showing any reluctance to tell the whole world about it or sue IBM in court, preferably by jury trial. In a jury trial the people deciding your case are most likely to be employed by someone. And the jury members are going to consider whether they would want their employer to do to them what IBM is doing to its former employees. According to Douglas A. Grose, Vice President, Manufacturing & Operations, " Juries who are bombarded with questionable and hard to understand scientific claims will often tend to vote more on sympathy than credibility of the case."

According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, ''IBM firmly believes, based upon state-of-the-art science, that it had no liability in this case and that it did not act wrongfully in any manner. Although the Ruffing family felt justified in bringing this action, they now request that they be permitted to go on with their lives in a private fashion. Neither IBM nor the family (nor their respective counsel) will be issuing any further or different statements in this matter.'' (by contract, I'm sure.)

IBM appears to be settling up with the people whose cases they know they have no chance of winning. Because once those cases are decided in court, almost everyone would be able to use the cases won against IBM to win their case. So, the last thing IBM wants is cases that were against them being used as evidence in the cases they feel they have a chance at winning or postponing indefinitely. Postponing? Remember when the Justice Department spent 10 years trying to stop IBM from bullying everyone else? IBM outlasted the Justice Department. Oh, the Justice Department did eventually get the case into court; but they eventually quietly tabled the lawsuit indefinitely. They simply decided to have the court postpone setting the next trial date until further notice with the intention of not scheduling a new date:

For further reading check out Poughkeepsie Journal's "Big Blue faces other plaintiffs" I wonder if IBM will suffer from Clintonitis^* again and feel anybody else's pain?! The last time I remember IBM feeling the pain of its employees was when IBM decide to rob its long standing employees of one-third to one-half of their pension, only to have congress pressure the IRS not to allow IBM to follow through with their plans. IBM said it felt its employees' pains and changed their mind. They would allow anyone within 10 years of retirement to have the old benefits package (as required by IRS, no doubt):

Terms:

^*Clintonitis:

Any lie, or derivative thereof, that was originally told by the ex-president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, while running for and/or executing the office of the President of the United State of America. Clintonitis is also known to leave its victom unable to recognize and/or admit what they did is really as bad as it seems to be. This disease was named after Bill Clinton, because he had to most widely known symptoms and the probably one of the worst cases of this social disease.