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Leukemia lawsuit drags on

Sheila Hotchkin
Express-News Staff Writer

02/27/2005 - The longer it takes to resolve a lawsuit claiming a landfill caused a child's cancer, the more it costs everyone involved. With every day that passes, the city owes another $3,000 in interest on the multimillion-dollar judgment awarded to 10-year-old Sarah Pollock and her family.

The Pollocks aren't interested in collecting any more money. After enduring their little girl's leukemia and a court battle that already has stretched two years, they just want to see the case resolved enough to suggest mediation at one point.

"What a tragedy that this has gone on so long," lamented Sylvan Lang Jr., the family's attorney.

But city leaders feel so strongly that they aren't to blame that they appealed the case to the Texas Supreme Court earlier this month. The top court has not yet decided to review it.

"We believe the landfill did not cause the cancer," First Assistant City Attorney Martha Sepeda said. "I think the city is acting as a good steward of public funds by continuing to follow the appellate process."

Even after a state appeals court reduced it last year, the award was worth $7.64 million, plus $2.3 million in prejudgment interest. It will accrue interest at an annual rate of 10 percent until the judgment is paid or reversed.

At the end of this month, the city will owe the Pollocks more than $12 million. That's still far less than the original $23 million award, which made the National Law Journal's tally of the top 100 jury verdicts in 2003.

The award was reduced first by the trial judge, and later by the 4th Court of Appeals.

The girl's parents schoolteachers who say medical bills and the abandonment of their house ruined them financially said they do not care about the growing interest. They just want the city to pay the award itself.

"The Pollocks have an opinion that they're going to act in the best interest of their 10-year-old child," Lang said. "And this is not an academic exercise to their 10-year-old child."

The case traces back to a house at 10811 Mount Mesabi that Charles and Tracy Pollock bought after they married in 1992. The house stood beside an inactive landfill near West Avenue and Blanco Road.

The family lived there while Tracy was pregnant and when Sarah, the second of three children, was born in June 1994.

When Sarah was 3, she fell during a dance class and complained of stomach pains. That led to doctor visits and, ultimately, the girl being diagnosed with leukemia early in 1998. She began chemotherapy within days.

Sarah's hair fell out, grew back and fell out again. She spent much of her childhood in hospitals, too sick to play even with other young patients.

At times, her parents could not touch her without washing their hands first because her immune system was so wasted by chemotherapy.

The same year Sarah fell ill, the Pollocks tried to sell their house. In the process, they came across a study that found benzene leaking from the landfill. Doctors told them the benzene may have caused their daughter's cancer.

"We were devastated," Tracy Pollock said.

Added her husband: "The children never went back to the house. They went to live with their grandmother."

City attorneys have challenged the expert testimony presented by the Pollocks at trial, calling it speculative and unsupported, and saying there is "no evidence" that the landfill caused Sarah's leukemia.

Also, they contend, the Texas Constitution protects municipalities from most liability while performing governmental functions, including operating landfills. There are few exceptions to this "sovereign immunity."

The city contends lower courts wrongly allowed the Pollock family to collect personal injury damages under an exception meant to cover only destruction of property and that precedent would expose state and municipal governments across Texas to unlimited liability they have never before faced.

The state of Texas agrees and has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the city's case.

The family's attorney says the exception has been used to award personal injury damages for more than a century. Lang has presented legal cases from as far back as 1889 to support this assertion.

He says the appeals court already addressed every one of the city's arguments.

"The city's suggestion that there's no precedent for this court of appeals opinion is just flat wrong," he said. "I'm sorry to be so strident about it, but it's just exasperating."

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Leukemia, Infection Tied To Aging Stem Cells

By: Stanford University Medical Center on Jun 27 2005

Leukemia and Aging
Older people are more prone to infections and have a higher risk of developing leukemia, and now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have one hint as to why that may be. The group found that in mice, the bone marrow stem cells responsible for churning out new blood cells slow down in their ability to produce immune cells, leaving older mice with fewer defenses against infection.

These new findings, published in the June 20 online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to mounting evidence that many pitfalls of aging result from either older stem cells or stem cells responding to their older environment.

"Aging results in a diminished capacity of the body to maintain tissue and organ function. Since we know the cells mediating this maintenance are stem cells, it doesn't take a great leap of faith to think that stem cells are at the heart of that failure," said Derrick Rossi, PhD, postdoctoral scholar and co-first author on the paper with postdoctoral scholar David Bryder, PhD.

In addition to producing fewer immune cells, the older blood-forming stem cells were actively using genes known to be involved in leukemia, a group of cancers that affect blood cells. This could be one reason why older people are more prone to developing certain forms of leukemia.

Senior author Irv Weissman, MD, director of the Stanford Institute for Cancer and Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, said one surprise came when the group transplanted older stem cells into younger mice. Those cells continued to behave like old stem cells, producing fewer immune cells and turning on cancer-causing genes. From previous work in mouse muscle cells, he said he expected the blood-forming stem cells to resume a more youthful life once transplanted into younger mice.

This work could eventually lead to new ways of improving immune function in older people or of preventing leukemia. As one example, Weissman said that by understanding the difference between older and younger stem cells it may be possible to prompt old cells to act young again, reviving their ability to produce immune cells.

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Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center's Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu - STANFORD, Calif.

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