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High Court Hears Anthrax Death Suit

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The Associated Press

Published: May 6, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - The federal government and a private laboratory have no duty under state law to protect the public from lethal materials, their lawyers told the Florida Supreme Court on Monday in a lawsuit over the anthrax death of a supermarket tabloid photo editor.
Oral arguments on the issue came at the request of a federal appeals court trying to decide whether the lawsuit should go to trial.

Robert Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, after being exposed to anthrax. It was in an envelope mailed to the offices of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, Sun and Globe newspapers. His wife, Maureen Stevens, sued the government and Battelle Memorial Institute, a research company in Columbus, Ohio, alleging they were a source of the anthrax strain that killed her husband.

Investigators have been unable to determine who sent the anthrax or how it was obtained.
Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Bucholtz and Battelle lawyer Tami Lyn Azorsky argued that there is no way their clients could foresee the material would be used as a terror weapon because it had never happened before.

The facilities use anthrax to develop countermeasures and drugs to protect against or treat it, the lawyers said.

Since Stevens' death, four other people have died - two workers in a Washington, D.C., postal facility that received mail containing the bacteria and two women in Connecticut and New York City whose source of exposure has not been determined.

Stevens' lawyer, Phillip Burlington, argued such high-risk materials are an exception to the special relationship rule and that its potential misuse should have been obvious.

The Supreme Court did not indicate when it would rule.

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