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Mercury poisoning from rectifier tubes lawsuit

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Wigwam Jones

Wigwam Jones

Caesar non supra grammati
Apparently the lawsuit is targeting sellers of vacuum tubes. First I heard of it was here:

http://www.cascadesurplus.com/lawsuit/

A number of popular suppliers are named in the lawsuit, including Antique Electronic Supply, Allied Electronics, Angela Instruments, MCM Electronics, VacuumTubes.com, Surplus Sales of Nebraska, and Triode Electronics, to name a few. Ebay had also been named a defendant, but they successfully moved to get dropped from the case because they do not manufacture vacuum tubes.

The person filing the suit, Ryan Inman, appears to own and operate Hot Glass, making what appears to be vacuum tube audio equipment.

So I guess a word of caution. Do not sell vacuum tubes that contain mercury, or you could find yourself sued into oblivion. And of course, don't breathe mercury vapors from rectifier tubes.

And dang, what is this lawsuit-happy world coming to, anyway?

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. This is my personal opinion posted for entertainment purposes only.
 
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Some people have no business ethics, and also seem to forget that in times of the net, stories travel quickly.

It will backfire on him.
 
One of my concerns is that smaller distributors will become frightened of being sued into oblivion; basically if he has a case, anyone who has ever used vacuum tubes has a case. Then they'll just decide it's not worth the hassle to keep selling vacuum tubes, and that's pretty much that for vacuum tube-based audio.
 
Bigerik said:
Mercury is some nasty stuff!
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Yes it is. But we used to play with it on our desks in school and nobody died or even got ill. I'm not saying it shouldn't be treated as a hazard but the extent to which they go today seems ridiculous. Aren't the Compact Florescent bulbs the government wants us to be using a mercury hazard ? When do we get to sue them?

On a final note I can't wait for the day I see a pharmaceutical commercial for a new drug followed immediately by an ad from a national law firm trolling a class action suit against that self same drug.

Maybe things really are going to hell in a handbasket.

Addendum: Maybe I'm wrong - but how do you get mercury poisoning from a tube unless you break it? How many tubes has this guy broken? As a person restoring tube gear for a living how could he not know that there's mercury in a mercury rectifier?

I'd toss $20 into a legal defense fund for those being sued. There are a heck of a lot of us on this forum...that could come to some real money.

Just a thought.
 
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What's the guy doing, smashing multiple vacuum tubes and sniffing the remnants for long periods of time?

How do you get exposed to Hg when it's inside a sealed vacuum tube. For the record I at one time worked for Coulter Electronics as a field engineer/tech rep. As part of my supplies for maintaining the equipment i carried a large bottle of Hg in my vehicle. It was kept appropriately sealed so I was never over exposed.
 
Bigerik said:
Mercury is some nasty stuff!
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It certainly is, no doubt about that. The question is whether or not it is reasonable to sue all the companies that sell vacuum tubes because vacuum tubes contain mercury. If one person can do it, all can do it.

Once upon a time, film cameras used batteries for metering that contained mercury. They were advantageous because they maintained a flat voltage level for a very long time, then they died suddenly. So instead of getting wonky meter readings and not realize that your batteries were going kaput, your meter tended to either work (and be accurate) or not work at all. This was before they put voltage regulators in cameras, mind.

So mercury batteries were outlawed worldwide, and although there were some stashes of them here and there, they all eventually dried up. The choices one has now for a vintage camera that once used mercury batteries are a special kind of converter, having the camera retrofitted with newer electronics, or not using the meter and depending on an external meter. One might compare that to tube-based audio and say where is the 'substitute' for vacuum tubes if they are outlawed? Solid-state, I guess.

All it takes is enough people filing lawsuits for 'mercury poisoning' in vacuum tubes and the makers and sellers will either be sued out of existence, or they'll simply fold to avoid the possibility of being sued. That's not a happy future to contemplate.
 
“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”
― Aristophanes
 
Most of us have a mouth full of fillings leeching mercury into our bodies at much higher levels then I would bet you'd ever get out of a vacuum tube. A silly nuisance suit is what I think of this.
 
Silly ass question...

If the tube holds a vacuum, i.e. air can't get in, how does the mercury get out?? :scratch2:

I'd love to see him prove #35 that he has not been exposed to mercury from ANY other source.


Douche bags like this putz need some lead poisoning.....
 
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Wigwam Jones said:
All it takes is enough people filing lawsuits for 'mercury poisoning' in vacuum tubes and the makers and sellers will either be sued out of existence, or they'll simply fold to avoid the possibility of being sued. That's not a happy future to contemplate.
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Hence my suggestion that we start a defense fund. Cascade has already said they can't afford to fight this - despite the fact that they never sold this guy a single tube - and will fold. What about the others?
 
And here's the thing about lawsuits. Frivolous or not, if the defendant does not show up in court, the plaintiff wins default judgment. The merits of the case won't even be argued.
 
It should be noted that anyone can initiate a lawsuit against anyone for any purpose. That does not mean that the plaintiff will prevail. This will very possibly be thrown out before it gets very far. Ebay got released because they don't manufacture tubes. AFAIK, none of the other defendants manufacture tubes either.

I do think that it is a reasonable expectation that a routine seller of vacuum tubes should know that certain rectifiers contain mercury, and it's also reasonable that they should include a warning notice to that effect when they sell such tubes. That doesn't mean that I think the plaintiff is right in his suit. Sounds like he should have known which tubes contained mercury and taken adequate precautions. It's not like these vendors are marketing number 83 rectifiers to children to use for pellet gun target practice.
 
If we can plainly see that these kind of suits are frivolous, how and why do they wind up in court??? This guy is citing companies like CBS and GE and following ownership streams back to Ken -Rad in 1952???
 
If he's the guy that runs Hot Glass, they have in the past sold gear that contains tubes. He would be as guilty as those he is suing. He should sue himself.
 
Bigerik said:
Too Many lawyers?
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Too many unemployed lawyers looking for a big score on a contingency for a nuisance lawsuit against a big corporation.

I'm not sure what the precedent would be but somebody like GE or CBS might just pay him the $75,000 to go away as it's probably cheaper for them to do so that fight it.
 
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