Lawsuit against TB-infected air traveller to be filed in Quebec court
Last Updated: Saturday, July 7, 2007 | 7:02 PM ET
The Canadian Press
The American personal-injuries lawyer who caused a health scare after flying despite being infected with a potent form of tuberculosis is facing a lawsuit by three fellow passengers, including one from Quebec.
Montreal lawyer Anlac Nguyen says he is planning to file a lawsuit in Quebec court next week against Andrew Speaker.
Speaker, who practises out of an Atlanta-based firm, flew from Prague to Montreal in May despite being warned that he had a drug-resistant form of TB.
His condition has since been downgraded, though he remains isolated at a Denver hospital.
The plaintiffs in the proposed lawsuit include two Czech sisters who sat next to Speaker while on their way to a family reunion in Montreal, as well as a man who works and lives in Laval, Que.
Nguyen says Speaker unnecessarily put people at risk by travelling against a doctor's orders.
"We think that Mr. Speaker has committed a fault, and put people into inconvenience and suffering, and therefore there should be some compensation," he said.
Damages sought could change
In a notice of the lawsuit sent to Speaker three weeks ago, damages were listed at $100,000 for each of the sisters and at $60,000 for the Laval man, who was sitting farther away.
Nguyen said those figures could change as they are still determining damages caused by "future uncertainties.
"The ladies have been having difficulties with the Czech authorities as well," he said. "They have been pretty strongly affected by that."
A total of 29 passengers on the flight from Prague are being followed by health officials in Canada and abroad because of the risk they may have been infected.
Nguyen raised the possibility that some of these other passengers will be added to the lawsuit.
"We are told that there will be other plaintiffs who will come forward once we file the suit," he said.
On Tuesday, Speaker received word that he doesn't have the highly drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis known as XDR-TB.
He is instead infected with a multi-drug resistant form of the bacteria, but it is still a threat to his health and to those in contact with him.
Speaker said Thursday he would have cancelled his trip to Europe and gone into isolation if U.S. government health officials had told him after he was diagnosed with a dangerous form of the disease.
Traveller insists he was told he wasn't contagious
"There's still this perception that I was acting irresponsibly and the CDC didn't do anything wrong," Speaker said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press from a Colorado hospital, where he has been under treatment for a month.
Speaker said he was told in a meeting with officials May 10 he was not contagious and was never ordered not to travel.
Health authorities say he was told he was not "highly" contagious and they advised him not to fly to Europe.
On Thursday, he accused the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of trying to distort the timeline to cover up the fact he was not ordered into isolation before May 10.
Speaker insisted he had followed instructions.
He acknowledged he did not abide by CDC officials' wishes to turn himself in to health authorities in Italy, but instead took a flight back to North America.
He has said in the past he feared for his life at that point and wanted to make his way back to go to the Denver hospital.
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