reason that well-drafted discovery propounded by plaintiffs to these defendants in this litigation designed

to secure detailed documentary evidence of the entire nature and full extent of defendants' fraudulent

concealment of health hazards associated with their products has been stayed by the October 1998 Order

of Judge William Martin of the Superior Court of Santa Clara County. At such time as the Court permits

plaintiffs to resume implementation of their discovery plan and defendants produce their toxicity data

files and related materials, plaintiffs will be able to provide with even greater specificity the fraudulent

misrepresentations foisted on the public, including plaintiffs, by these manufacturers and distributors.

107. Even as these amendments to the complaints are being filed with this Court, however,

spokespersons for the Chemical Suppliers' Trade Association and the Chemical Manufacturers

Association ("CMA") have formally and officially announced that they will in the near future be

spending one billion dollars to test a wide variety of commonly used industrial chemicals for

carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity and endocrine disruption capacity. This

public announcement, made at the Press Club in Washington, DC on January 27, 1999 admits the truth

of the key fraud allegation in plaintiffs' original complaint: that the manufacturers of the "high purity"

chemicals and chemical mixtures to which plaintiffs have been deleteriously exposed have never

adequately tested either the components or their commercial mixtures for their carcinogenicity,

immunotoxicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity and endocrine disruption capacity.

108. In a one line statement of direct applicability to the experience of Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs

decedent, the President of the CMA assured the public that the research would be "transparent" and

open, and that the CMA would "let the chips fall where they may."

109. The representations that their electronics sector products are safe, even though the

Chemical Manufacturers Association has finally conceded in public that no adequate testing has ever

been done, have been made repeatedly and wilfully. These representations have been made even though

through their trade association the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and its predecessor, the

Manufacturing Chemists Association, the chemical supplier defendants have for years wilfully and

artfully resisted imposition of the most minimal legal requirements for toxicity and hazard disclosure

on industrial chemicals, and have cynically cloaked their de minimus disclosures about chemical

formulations in "trade secret" protections at the price of worker health and safety.

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