Suit Claims Office Tower Made Its Occupants Ill : Courts: Legal experts agree that trial could help set standards for allocating responsibility in alleging sick-building syndrome.

Louise Aldrich says working at one of the Airport Towers in El Segundo made her absolutely sick.

Her eyes hurt. Her head pounded. Her throat and neck glands swelled.

Aldrich wasn’t alone in her suffering, her lawyers charged in a trial that opened in Torrance Superior Court last week.

They say similar symptoms began plaguing many of the 12th-floor occupants of Airport Tower C shortly after they moved into the spanking-new building on Sepulveda Boulevard in early 1985.

The alleged effects of fumes trapped in the 23-story building, originally owned by Prudential Insurance Co., has become the subject of a multimillion-dollar civil trial featuring 14 attorneys, a dozen plaintiffs, 10 defendants and nearly 1,500 exhibits.

Legal experts say the complex trial, expected to last as long as three months, could help set standards for allocating responsibility in cases alleging “sick-building syndrome.”

The term refers to buildings in which poor ventilation combines with a variety of fumes to create indoor air pollution. Environmental experts say the syndrome has become more common in recent years.

Energy conservation measures begun in the late 1970s--such as sealing windows shut and installing extra insulation--and new man-made construction materials that release gases into the air have combined to create indoor pollution as much as 100 times worse than pollution outdoors, a recent Environmental Protection Agency study has shown.

Plaintiffs in the Torrance suit say indoor pollution and poor construction worked in concert with a poorly designed ventilation system in Airport Tower C to drive them from their 12th-floor offices.

Defendants in the civil suit say that the building is not sick, and that hysteria stemming from minor glue fumes and the sight of inspectors wearing futuristic protective clothing precipitated the lawsuit.

Tower C, the third of three high-rise buildings Prudential developed on Sepulveda Boulevard, was the only one to allow tenants to move in before all construction had been completed. The other two are not named in the lawsuit. All three buildings are currently occupied.

Attorneys outlined the case to jurors during opening statements.

“This building was a classic and severe case of sick-building syndrome,” said attorney Helen Eisenstein, who represents two former tenants--a software firm and an accounting firm--and eight of the 10 individuals who are suing Prudential and its contractors.

“A number of factors came together to make tenants sick here: Inadequate ventilation, construction fumes, improper operation of the ventilation system and poor choices of building materials,” Eisenstein said.

“Prudential built a sick building and allowed that building to get sicker and sicker,” she said.

Attorneys for Prudential and its contractors, however, told jurors that “nothing sinister” was going on at Airport Tower C and that the structure does not suffer from sick-building syndrome.

“Through hysteria and through greed, what you and I would equate with smelling model airplane glue has grown into a situation where you are faced with making a decision in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit,” said attorney Scott Hoyt, who represents Prudential and its property manager.

The defendants contend that the initial glue fumes sparked a wave of panic among the tenants, who became “habitual complainers . . . who were feeding off one another,” Hoyt said.

“The inspector showed up in a moon suit and it scared people,” Hoyt told jurors. “He’ll tell you that that was an overreaction.”