Tort Law
Lawyer Who Traveled While Infected with TB Sues CDC
Posted Apr 30, 2009 5:15 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The Atlanta lawyer who caused an international scare by traveling while infected with tuberculosis has sued federal officials for publicizing his condition.
Lawyer Andrew Speaker alleges the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention invaded his privacy, harming his reputation and leading to the breakup of his marriage, CNN reports. Speaker says he and his wife split up after the wedding but before they filed the marriage license.
The CDC released details of Speaker’s identity and medical history in 2007 and said he had taken an international flight while infected with a drug-resistant form of TB, the suit says. Speaker claims CDC officials knew he was planning to travel to Greece for his wedding and had told him he was not contagious, but never disclosed those details to the public.
Speaker says he contacted the CDC after its initial press conference, and it told him he could not take a commercial flight home. Because he could not afford a chartered flight, Speaker says he flew to Canada, where there was no restriction on flying, and drove to a New York hospital, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Speaker’s doctors later determined he had a less serious form of TB. He was successfully treated and released. Passengers on Speaker’s flights were tested for TB; none had the disease.
The suit was filed yesterday in federal court in Atlanta. "Speaker became the object of unwanted public attention, including expressions of public scorn and contempt (including death threats) due to the inaccurate light in the information presented, resulting in so much strain on his marital relationship that he and his new bride parted ways,” the suit says.
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Comments
B. McLeod
Apr 30, 2009 7:22 AM CST
Very sad about his marriage. Some women are just irrationally particular though, and don’t want to marry a person with the ill fate of being a tuberculosis patient. It’s not fair, I know, but life throws little ups and downs at everyone.
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J.D.
Apr 30, 2009 8:29 AM CST
One American with TB and the media/government complex goes crazy. Yet it remains silent about the thousands of illegal aliens bringing TB into our communities every year.
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JN
Apr 30, 2009 9:52 AM CST
Swine Flu is the Diet Coke of TB. Either is rather refreshing with a lime wedge.
I’d still rather sit next to someone with TB than a land whale whose carriage extends over the arm rest into my paid territory. Ok, maybe not.
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Cj
Apr 30, 2009 11:31 AM CST
The CDC did wrong by this guy in every step of the process. First they tell him it’s ok to fly to Greece for his wedding. They they suddenly determine that his flight back to the US somehow poses a problem. Instead of chartering a private plane for him to retrun to his country they told him to surrender to Greek authorities. Are you kidding me? No one in their right mind would subject themselves to a quarantine in a foreign country. Instead this guy got himself back to the US the only way available to him then turned himself in.
None of this should have made the news.
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JR
Apr 30, 2009 11:50 AM CST
What gall to sue the CDC. The guy, who knew he had TB, should not have flown. I think his fellow passengers and those he exposed the disease should sue him for putting them in danger.
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Cj
Apr 30, 2009 12:48 PM CST
JR… if you read anything about this case whatsoever, you’d know that he was cleared to fly after it was determined that he was not contagous nor did he have the drug resistant TB that everyone is scared of.
It wasn’t unitl he was in Greece that someone at CDC screwed up and mistakenly told him that he was carrying drug resistant TB. Making matters worse rather than sending a chartered jet or even a military plane to get him, they just told him to surrender to foreign authorities and trust himself to their medical system. I wouldn’t have followed those orders and neither should he.
This guy made it home and turned himself in as soon as he got there.. and you know what? After spending weeks in isolation away from his new wife and family, it turns out that CDC was completely WRONG. The original instructions allowing him to fly were appropriate. He didn’t expose anyone to TB, and even if he did, due to CDC’s initial screw up in telling him that he could fly in the first place, they owed it to him to get him home to the US safely. Their failure to act is the reason he was on that flight to Canada in the first place.
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fed up
Apr 30, 2009 2:25 PM CST
See Wikipedia for the facts in this matter. Speaker’s father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is a microbiologist. On July 12, 2007 it was announced that seven Canadians and two Czechs will launch $1.3 million in civil lawsuits in Montreal. Eight were on the same flight as Andrew Speaker and one was a roommate of one of those on the same flight.
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Setx
May 9, 2009 5:21 AM CST
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
<a >provincial health services authority vancouver</a> <a >bellevue innovative medicine</a>
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