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Man Sues Neighbor Claiming Wi-Fi Made Him Sick
OrangeMonkey11 writes "A Santa Fe man who claims to suffer from 'electromagnetic sensitivities' has sued his neighbor after she refused to stop using wireless devices. 59-year-old Arthur Firstenberg claims his sensitivity can be set off by cellphones, routers and other electronic devices. From the article: 'Firstenberg, 59, wanted Raphaela Monribot to limit her use of the devices. "I asked her to work with me," he said. "Basically, she refused." So he sued Monribot in state district court, seeking $530,000 in damages and an injunction to force her to turn off the electronics. "Being the target of this lawsuit has affected me very adversely," Monribot said Friday in response to e-mailed questions. "I feel as if my life and liberty are under attack for no valid reason, and it has forced me to have to defend my very basic human rights."'"
the more they'll act like morons.
I wish reporters wouldn't give this type of crap the time of day.
Sent from your iPad.
If this makes it into the courtroom the judge is the idiot.
It's the guy's problem, not his neighbour's. If he's got a sensitivity to it, he should don a tinfoil hat and live inside a Faraday cage.
I developed lactose intolerance late in my life. Should I sue the makers of all my favourite foods because they can't accomodate me?
He's lucky he doesn't live in a universe where "electromagnetism" is everywhere, all the time. Oh, wait...
Life needs more saving throws.
Ok people, do you have any CLUE how many radio waves are going through your body at any given time? I mean seriously do people think that GPS's, Cell Phones, Watches, all have some kind of invisible tether? Your best hope is to find a cave in the mountains. Not a home in suburbia...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
If he is a homeowner, how he protects himself from his surrounding environment is his responsibility. If he really believes he is being made sick by electro-magnetic energies around him maybe he needs to wrap his house in a Faraday cage and shut the hell up.
You can't sue your neighbor when their cherry tree blooms and sets off your allergies. Same thing.
Death looks every man in the face. All any man can do is look back and smile. - Marcus Aurelius
Blasphemy! I'm going to sue you for that statement, you insensitive clod!
This is the irritating thing about it. You can harass people with frivolous lawsuits, and, while the judge may throw them out, the lawyers still get paid. Provided the guy's lawyer asks for his fee up front, what is his disincentive to file lawsuits like this one? I really wish lawyers could receive some sort of punishment or censure for wasting the court's time and enabling harassment.
I suspect that the plaintiff is suffering from some significant mental health issues. Maybe paranoia or hypochondria or something. My guess is that this guy isn't suing because he's a jerk, but because he thinks the issue is real.
Hopefully the suit will be dismissed with a minimum of fuss and expense, and the guy can get the help he probably needs.
I'm going to sue you for insulting all of us insensitive clods, you insensitive clod!
...without telling the Moron, and then let the moron keep insisting "your wireless makes me sick". It would be funny. Especially in court.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Even if it makes it to court the guy won't. I'll be there with a grid of routers, cell phones and all type of other EM emitting radiation devices.
Follow me here: The average household is somewhere around 2400 square feet. Let's assume for simplicity sake that it's a box measuring 49'x49'x10'. That makes for about 6800 square feet of interior surface area. The skin depth for gold at 2.4 GHz is pretty close to 200nm, but to be sure that the vast majority of the signal is stopped lets assume a coating of 1um thickness. 6800 square feet multiplied by 1um yields a volume of about 6e-4 m^3 of gold. Multiplying this by the density of gold (~20gm/cm^3) yields about 12 kilograms of gold. The last time I checked, gold was something close to $1200 dollars an ounce, which works out to be about $508k. So all the guy really wants to do is use the settlement money to WiFi proof his house. And have a gold plated interior. And a little bit left over for hookers and blow.
1) Mount a satellite dish on the wall of a long room.
2) Place a chair at the opposite end of the room.
3) Have this guy sit in the chair for an hour.
4) See how much he complains about headaches, how much he acts up, how he has been brain-poisoned etc.
5) Show him that the dish is not connected to anything, and never has been.
If he doesn't react, affix it to a signal generator and see how he performs in an actual scientifically conducted test. But do it my way first, then make it into an amusing video montage so everyone knows how much of a tool he is.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
From the summary:
"I feel as if my life and liberty are under attack for no valid reason, and it has forced me to have to defend my very basic human rights."'"
Ok, so the guy filing the suit is a moron and the suit has no technical merit at all. But really? Running a router is now a basic human right? A little melodramatic don't you think?
Well, some places are declaring Internet access a human right...
But I don't think that's really the point.
Generally speaking, you're allowed to do what you want within the confines of your own house. Of course you still can't murder people and whatnot... But it's a little unusual for your neighbors to be able to dictate what kind of telephone you use, and whether your Internet connection is wired or wireless, or whether you can own or use a cell phone. Those are all liberties that we pretty much take for granted.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
PopSci just had a major article on it: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/disconnected
I'm sorry... UTP is not the answer. The answer is to tell this guy to go fuck himself. I'm not responsible for changing my behavior because some other nutbar has a psychosomatic illness. That's for him and his doctors to deal with. Not me and his lawyers.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
And what's with this discrimination against sensitive clods? I'll be seeing you all in court.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
My dad actually presided an arbitration over a complaint against a cell tower, the complaint was of course about the electromagnetic field and how they have a negative impact on the people. The main complainant presented his case, lamented for nearly 15 minutes (he has to be given the time, no matter what, part of the procedure, even though my dad really wanted to interrupt...), when he ended the rest of the arbitration consisted of:
Dad: What's that in your breast pocket?
Complainant: My cellphone.
Dad: Complaint rejected. My advice is to get a book about basic physics, read the part about electromagnetism and how distance affects fields and their strength.
The hard part was to get the recorder to strike that last part from the record...
I know that case pretty well, my dad always uses it as the perfect example why you have to know more than just your field of study, him only knowing law and not physics would not have ended this case so quickly. And it's a good example how hysteria often replaces rational thinking, especially when people feel ill for some reason and grasp for straws in their quest to find a culprit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"And, I'm sorry to say, probably win."*
*Citation needed
Just because you're jaded doesn't mean reality matches your view.
...when you are the victim. Don't know for an Wireless AP but I go real headaches from a telco's base station. It was as close as 70 meters from my appartment and although it was 4 storeys higher than my home it still made me sick. And the most interesting part: while climbing the stairs to my appartment going through the floors when I was getting near my floor the nasty sensation was setting off. So the guy may be in his right. All he did was to buy a house and then waited till somebody started making him sick. Why don't you look from the other side - make the lady put her house in a Faraday cage if she insist on her wireless?
Where's the control in your experiment? How do you know that it was the tower and not, say, the ultrasonic pest repellent devices that your landlord had installed on your floor? Or any of a half dozen frequently used but kind of nasty chemicals that are routinely found in apartment buildings? Or the flickering old-style fluorescent lights? Frankly, the fact that the sensation wasn't worse OUTSIDE when the building isn't shielding you from what sounds like line-of-sight irradiation makes me dubious that the source of your headaches have been properly isolated.
Or, you're trolling, and I fell for it.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Didn't this same Firstenberg guy ALREADY DO THIS to another neighbor back in January?
Why is anyone even paying attention to him and his absurd claims?
The devices in question are already approved by the Federal government for use in residential settings.
That more than likely trumps any claims by this nutcase*.
It will be up to the nutcase* himself to insulate or shield the interior of his home.
Think about it - if instead of electromagnetic sensitivity he thought he had car sensitivity - cars driving by his house made him sick. He'd want to stop people from driving on the street, but that's another government sanctioned activity that no court would let him impose restrictions on.
*nutcase - someone with a psychological disorder that they think is caused by something external, instead of the truth which is that he's got too much time on his hands. He should really buy an old mine and live underground if he wants to avoid RF.
Putting moderation advice in your