In-Flight Smoking Trial Starts Today Stricken Airline Attendants Seek $5 Billion From Tobacco Industry

Mildred McQuown was curious when she started seeing messages suggesting get-well notes for cancer-stricken flight attendants on a bulletin board at the Northwest Airlines base in Minneapolis.

Then she noticed the messages giving way to requests for sympathy cards.

McQuown, who lost one breast to cancer in 1991, is one of 26 nonsmoking flight attendants who have filed a $5 billion class-action lawsuit against the tobacco industry, blaming in-flight cigarette smoke for making them sick. Two of the original plaintiffs have died of cancer since the lawsuit was filed six years ago.

The case comes to trial today with the start of jury selection in the first secondhand smoke case ever faced by cigarette makers.

The industry denies that smoking, let alone environmental tobacco smoke, causes cancer, and its attorneys fought unsuccessfully to keep the case from being certified as a class-action on behalf of 60,000 nonsmoking flight attendants.

The attendants believe they were unwittingly placed at a higher risk than other nonsmokers because of the air recirculating systems on jets.

“If one person smokes on a flight, everybody smokes,” said Norma Broin, of Stafford, Va., the lead plaintiff in the case.

Broin is considered an ideal plaintiff because her Mormon lifestyle kept her away from smoking, drinking and other factors implicated in many cancer cases.

Patty Young, an American Airlines attendant for 32 years, recalls flights so smoky that her tears turned brown and tissues she used to wipe her face looked as though they had been used to mop up a coffee spill. She developed asthma, chronic bronchitis and a bad cough.

Just last month, Harvard researchers reported regular exposure to secondhand smoke appears to almost double the risk of heart disease, one of 22 ailments named in the lawsuit.